The Girl in the Blue Tunic

Eleven-year-old Hannah finds herself at the boarding school formerly attended by not only her deceased mother, but also her grim granny. After initial sadness she actually begins to like the place, in part due to her new, swotty, cynical, friend Lucy, and in part due to a mysterious waif-like girl, who flits in and out of Hannah's life. These visitations form the basis of a detective/ghost story, that proves our heroine has a more convoluted family history than she thought. This is a lengthy novel, but with easy-read print and it moves at a steady pace. Girl readers in late KS2 and early KS3 should warm to it. The characters are identifiably real and the setting modern, not stuffy, the same of which cannot be said about the book's disastrous cover!