Night of Ghosts and Hermits: Nocturnal Life on the Seashore

by Mary Stolz

Nocturnal marine life on a Florida beach. “The authentic, finely detailed drawings . . . accompany Stolz’s new and riveting true story, a match for her award-winning novels.”-Publishers Weekly

Genres: Science

48 pages, Hardcover

First published October 10, 1985

About the author

Mary Stolz was a noted author for children and adolescents whose novels earned critical praise for the seriousness with which they took the problems of young people. Two of her books ''Belling the Tiger'' (1961) and ''The Noonday Friends'' (1965), were named Newbery Honor books by the ALA but it was her novels for young adults that combined romance with realistic situations that won devotion from her fans. Young men often created more problems and did not always provide happy ever after endings. Her heroines had to cope with complex situations and learn how to take action whether it was working as nurses (The Organdy Cupcakes), living in a housing project (Ready or Not), or escaping from being a social misfit by working for the summer as a waitress (The Sea Gulls Woke Me).

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

A surprise find on Open Library, and yes, Mary Stolz's 1985 ecological picture book Night of Ghosts and Hermits: Nocturnal Life on the Seashore has definitely been very much scientifically and ecologically informative and after the first chapter also engagingly and evocatively enough penned.

But yes indeed, that first section of Night of Ghosts and Hermits: Nocturnal Life on the Seashore (where three brothers build a sandcastle and then leave it to the nocturnal creatures and the rising tides), while Mary Stolz does adequately set the stage so to speak for the coming sections detailing and describing nocturnal marine life, the sandcastle chapter in my opinion does flow a bit awkwardly and not all that smoothly.

Now with regard to recommendations, I would suggest Night of Ghosts and Hermits: Nocturnal Life on the Seashore to and for older children above the age of probably nine or ten (as even with the appreciated glossary at the back of Night of Ghosts and Hermits: Nocturnal Life on the Seashore, Mary Stolz does make use of some rather sophisticated science based vocabulary which might be a bit confusing to and for younger children) and with Mary Gallagher's lovely and realistically imaginative accompanying artwork providing a delightful visual mirror to and for Mary Stolz's printed words (the illustrations might be black and white but in my humble opinion, Marry Gallagher totally captures both that sense of nocturnal mystery and that once the sun sets, an entirely different type to ecosystem awakens on the seashore). And certainly, I was after my mild annoyance at Mary Stolz's writing style in chapter one of Night of Ghosts and Hermits: Nocturnal Life on the Seashore both compensated and enchanted by Stolz's text and how she manages to both realistically and emotionally focus on nocturnal seashore life and that just like during the day, nocturnal animal life also primarily deals with survival and producing viable offspring (and with the included bibliography being an added bonus, but of course also with the caveat that since Night of Ghosts and Hermits: Nocturnal Life on the Seashore was published in 1985, both Mary Stolz's printed facts and also her bibliographical sources will of course not include anything past that date).

[Madame Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a creepy story of what goes on in the dark sea.