This is a beautiful little book. At the outset it felt a bit like a lot of awards-fodder middle grade: an adult story cosplaying as a children's book, essentially. But Kyle Lukoff's experience working with kids, and his respect for them, definitely shines through. I thought the ghost story was a little less successful, though. I'll put my reasoning under a spoiler cut at the end.

Overall, I think this book would be totally embraced by a lot of kids in the older elementary school set, and the adult interactions are really great models for adult readers.

Spoiler

I'm fine living in the grey area between "actual haunting" and "Bug processing his grief via fantasy" but I didn't love the idea of a relative (even a ghost one) pushing a kid to make declarations about their identity in a particular timeframe, and I definitely did not love the forced-ghost-haircut situation. I think it would have been perfectly reasonable for Bug to have a dream about cutting his hair with his uncle, and then doing it. That being said, a lot of the ghosty moments are really beautiful writing!