SOLVED. children's/ya book with a pseudo-historic cast and ghost [s]

[Ann aka Iftcan]

Did that get your interest? :o) The story revolves around a girl and I believe a boy she meets at a "house" museum. (The boy part could be superimposed from another book, so that's not a definate part of the book.) There is also the ghost of a French girl from the time of Napoleon. The ghost is trying to find out what happened to her father, who I think was supposed to have been a famous painter at that time--or he was also friends with a famous painter. He was executed by Napoleon for supposed treason, but the girl ghost didn't believe it. There is also something about a garden with statues of this artist's children in it.

The ghost girl had left diaries behind from when she was alive, and 1 of them had been translated into English, and the "heroine" girl was loaned the book by one of the workers at the museum.

Further memories about the books:

No one knows the names of the statue children, as that has been lost in time. But the girl DOES know them and names each child--in addition to seeing the ghost girl, she's been having dreams about the time, possibly influenced by the ghost girl.

The live girl goes with I believe one of the curators from the museum to a house where the owner has a collection of the famous artist's paintings. One of them was a painting by the second artist that was of one of his daughter's when she came into the house to announce her engagement. This picture she had seen in a dream too, and she insisted that there was "something wrong" with it, since the fiancee in the picture was a middle-aged, plain farmer--and the girl was young, beautiful and looked extremely thrilled at the engagement. The owner and the curator thought that her arguments were good, so they took the painting to have it X-rayed--and discovered that the middle-aged farmer had been painted on top of another figure. And the second figure was that of the ghost-girl's father.

The book ends with the curator/friend of the girl getting in a copy of the ghost gir's second diary which had never been translated and with the ghost reading it--in English--to ther live girl. This provided her with what she needed to convince the curator to try to find the rest of the diaries of the ghost and of her father, which would "prove" that her father was not guilty of treason which seems to be what the ghost wanted in the first place.

[Michelle Mulford]

This sounds like The Court of the Stone Children by Eleanor Cameron. I loved her books when I was a kid!

[Ann aka Iftcan]

Yes it IS--thanks Michelle. For some reason I had it in my mind that it was some variation on GARDEN. Now to see if I can find a copy of it again.