The Ghost on the Hearth (Vermont Folklife Center Children's Book Series)

In the summer of her twelfth year, a poor girl named Emily leaves home to work on a farm in rural Quebec. Besides cooking and cleaning, Emily’s chores include, every night, scraping the candlewax from the family’s big stone hearth. The farmer and his wife love Emily, but when she falls ill and dies, another girl is hired to take her place. Soon, a strange event keeps recurring in the farmhouse: Every night, the new girl, Jenny, scrapes the wax from the hearth just as Emily did, but every morning, the wax is there again! What is going on? The first night the farmer and his wife fail to solve the mystery. But on the second night, the farmer’s wife snaps awake to find herself staring at . . . a ghost!

In classic, supple prose, acclaimed author Susan Milord retells a legend passed down by a French-Canadian family since the 1830s. Illustrated with lively, beautiful paintings by award-winning artist Lydia Dabcovich, The Ghost on the Hearth is both a thrilling tale of the supernatural and an affectionate celebration of long-ago rural life. An activities page at the end of the volume invites young readers to create their own stories of the supernatural.