Essie also begins to notice strange occurrences on the island. Moving to her stepfather’s big mansion on the dreary North Brother Island contributes to her long list of anxieties. She calls this list “The List of Unspeakable Fears”. Her mother tells her to write down all her anxieties and fears to help her cope and overcome them. Blackcreek runs a quarantine hospital for mostly poor immigrants who have incurable diseases. Ten-year-old Essie and her mother are moving from a crowded tenement in the Bronx to North Brother Island in the East River, where her new stepfather, Dr. This spooky, historical fiction middle-grade novel takes place in 1910 in New York City. Morris County Cooks: historic menus, recipes & food notes.Anxious children will feel a deep kinship with Essie, and this book should be required reading for their parents.

She also subtly and believably immerses the reader in the world of 1910 New York, linking Essie’s fears to new technologies of the time such as electricity and telephones. Kramer’s writing is elegant in its simplicity, revealing the longings and terrors of childhood in a way that will hold readers of all ages spellbound. But sometimes Essie’s fears run away with her, and she makes mistakes that put her in as much danger as the things she’s afraid of. She knows he has a secret, and she must brave some terrifying situations to learn what it is in order to save herself and her mam. Worst of all, her new stepfather frightens her. Essie feels that she’s being watched, and she sees people and things that others don’t. Essie must leave her best friend Bea and everything she knows to start a new life there.Īs soon as she arrives, she knows that something isn’t right with the island or the luxurious but creepy mansion she’s moved into.

Blackcreek, director of the notorious quarantine hospital on North Brother Island. And now she has something new to worry about: her mam has married Dr. On the “A” line alone are “Alligators, Ants, Anything with a Sharp Point.” Essie spent her earliest years as a much-loved child in a poverty-stricken Bronx tenement, but ever since her adored da died, Essie has felt alone with her fears.

Eleven-year-old Essie O’Neill is afraid of so many things that she keeps an alphabetized list.

The list of unspeakable fears