Ryan Wolf's "Darkness at Dreamer Mountain" is a surprising little read. Told in verse, I wasn't expecting the story to be terribly vivid, but Wolf managed to conjure up plenty of vivid descriptions to make younger audiences truly feel like they're in this spooky park. It's a fast-paced read, which I know will make younger readers want to continue chapter after chapter. A quick, yet highly effective, middle grade supernatural novel that I thought was well worth the read.

A great starting foray for young readers wanting to begin their novels-in-verse journey.

Darkness at Dreamer Mountain follows the Shiver Searchers, a paranormal hunting group, as they head into the abandoned amusement park, Dreamer Mountain. The characters find themselves confronting by their deepest fears in Dreamer Mountain and can’t get back out again until they face them.

A junior fiction novel, written in verse, Darkness at Dreamer Mountain gives young readers a taste of a more enjoyable side of poetry. In my experience, poetry taught in schools focuses so much on parsing through to find meaning, dissecting poems for meter or rhyme schemes, that the enjoyability of them often gets lost. This novel can be a great way to re-engage with younger readers with just enough spooks to really get them immersed.

Each poem moves smoothly from one to the next, the ending lines pulling a lot of weight in keeping the interest there for the next one. There’s a couple of complimentary pictures scattered throughout, and while the poems themselves are long, the lines are short and engaging.
I would have like to see a bit more variety in the poems’ structures, but as I’ve said, this is a nice introductory piece before students move up to more challenging reads. The poems are easy to digest and focus a lot on imagery.

I look forward to adding this to our library’s collection to give our young readers more variety in their poetry options.

A young boy named Teddy goes with his uncle to a haunted amusement park.
His uncle is a paranormal investigator.
Teddy has always wanted to help with the show, and ends up being part of the team.
Mysterious noises are heard, so begins the search.
In reality they have all entered the park but the twist is a clever one.
It's written in poetry style. So the pages aren't very long.
I read it in one sitting and thoroughly enjoyed it.