This one falls into the category of really odd and quirky middle grade fiction, but readable, if you can get past the premise: a skeleton emerges from the soil in Stanly’s backyard. Only Stanly, his friend Jaxon, Stanly’s little sister Miren, and the Kyrgyzstani babysitter, Ms. Francine, can actually see the skeleton tree, at least most of the time, and Miren calls the skeleton Princy.

Weeeell, as Jack Benny used to say, that’s a lot to take in: a dancing skeleton who may or may not be making Miren’s illness better —or worse. And Stanly wants to take a picture of “Princy”, win a prize, and force his estranged dad to pay attention to his deserted family. Stanly’s and Jaxon’s friendship is a lovely bit of business: Jaxon has OCD, and Stanly simply accepts Jaxon’s fence-post counting and food pickiness as a part of his friend’s personality.

I really liked parts of this book: Stanly’s relationship with his little sister, protective even when he was annoyed with her brattiness; Jaxon and Stanly and their friendship; the total weirdness of having a skeleton growing in a tree in your backyard. However, the sadness of Miren’s illness, the dad’s neglect of his family, and Stanly’s mom’s very difficult financial and living situation finally got to me, and I really didn’t want to finish the book, even though I had to know what would happen to Stanly and Miren and Princy.

Also, I know it’s so minor as to be nitpicking, but I really think Stanly should be spelled with an “e”, “Stanley”. It just looks wrong the way it is in this book.