From School Library Journal Grade 5-7-Johnna is pleased to have been assigned to research and write her sixth grade class's Halloween play with another classmate. There is a major problem, though-she is the daughter of an evangelist minister. As such, religion is a major part of her daily life, and she is forbidden to celebrate "the devil's holiday." However, she agrees to write the script, gaining confidence in herself as her ideas are accepted by her peers. But as she is gaining in confidence at school, the home front is fraught with tension. Uncle T.T., a charismatic traveling minister and fund raiser, agrees to do a tent crusade to help increase the coffers. His thrust is to unite the town against the devil's handiwork, and the school superintendent subsequently bans all Halloween activities. The sixth graders mount a campaign of their own, and the pageant goes on as planned. The story melds the history of the holiday, plus the fundamentalist objections to it with a degree of success. While some readers may have difficultly relating to Johnna's many conversations with Jesus, they should find the plot thought-provoking and engrossing. Tolan provides the holiday's historical background in detail, using the script writing of the pageant as a vehicle to bring up her point, as she contrasts it with the fundamental revivalist beliefs. She also arrives at a logical "meeting of the minds."-Beth Irish, Orange Public Library, CACopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews When Johnna's teacher enlists her to script the sixth-grade Halloween pageant, the loner is caught between her fundamentalist family's beliefs and the truth her research reveals. Johnna comes from a family of preachers. Short of cash as a result of her father's generosity, her mother invites Uncle T.T., an evangelist, to lead a money-making crusade in their small Ohio town. His condemnation of Halloween as ``the Devil's Holiday'' divides the community. Johnna's opposition to her family will lead her to a new sense of self and new friends, while she discovers her gifts as an author and an evangelist in her own right. Though Tolan opens up the issue of group hysteria without exploring it in depth, that's a minor flaw in a book with several nicely realized characters of quiet courage, refreshingly committed to their faith. (Fiction. 9- 14) --
