Dead Yard: Seeds of Doom – at a glance
The School Reading Lists’ five word review: Caribbean, traditions, ghosts, family, understanding.
Children’s book title: Dead Yard: Seeds of Doom.
Children’s author: P.J. Killburn.
Children’s illustrator: Markia Jenai.
Genre: Children’s fiction.
Published by: Little Tiger.
ISBN: 9781788957649.
Recommended for children aged: 8-12.
First published: Paperback September 2025.
This children’s book is ideal for: looking into different traditions and celebrations and how they have moved across the globe.
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Our review:
All Jermaine Campbell wants to do is finish his film and send it off to the competition he’s sure will set him on the road to Hollywood and the red carpet. Instead, he has to go to his great-great-uncle Carl’s Dead Yard to help send his spirit on its way on the ninth night since his passing. Not in the best of moods, he escapes to the garden for a break from those gathered inside the house and stumbles across his mum’s patties in the food tent, just waiting for him. Unfortunately, they were also waiting for Uncle Carl, who was supposed to be first to the table to eat his fill before his midnight passing to the other side.
His transgression means Carl is stuck, and Jermaine is the only one who can see his ghostly presence while a malicious spirit watches and waits, determined to get its spectral hands on some seeds the roguish uncle should never have had in the first place.
As a mysterious sickness begins striking down the children in Jermaine’s neighbourhood, he knows he has to find a way to identify and catch the malevolent spirit, recover the seeds, and keep his uncle out of trouble. Of course, he also has to edit his film, check his great-great-aunt is coping after losing her brother, and make sure no one questions what he’s doing. Easy, right?
Our verdict:
A brilliant read for Halloween and beyond, this book quietly educates while engrossing the reader in an exciting adventure. Jermaine, a far from perfect main protagonist, stumbles his way from a disastrous film shoot in his local market, to his great-great-uncle’s wake or Dead Yard, and into a race against time to discover why the children in his neighbourhood are falling asleep and not waking up. He is likeable, relatable, and far nicer than he’d want any of his friends to realise.
Being saddled with his grumpy, unpleasant, recently departed uncle’s ghost isn’t a situation Jermaine wants to continue, but the burgeoning relationship between the two is believable, realistic, and makes a creepy book a fun read for the suggested age range of 8 to 12 years.
Teaching points and book club discussion ideas:
- A Dead Yard or Nine Night is a funerary tradition from West Africa, also practised in the Caribbean. This was all new to Jermaine, and it got him into all sorts of trouble! What other special occasions have different celebrations and traditions which are now practised here?
- Jermaine wants to be a famous director and is excited to enter the film competition. How do you think he will get on when his film has everything Annette shot as they tried to beat the Ole Higue?
- Jermaine tells his two best friends about his dead uncle, and they actually believe him! How do you think he would have got on in his quest without them?
- If you were going to enter a film competition, what subject would you choose? In a cross-curricular activity with art, design a poster for your first movie.
- Jermaine used the threat of not taking his mum on the red carpet to try to get his way, but it didn’t really make much difference! If you could choose anyone to take to a film première, who would your special guest be?
Many thanks to Little Tiger for the review copy.
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