Point of View

"Shade" by Jeri Smith-Ready is a fiction novel recounted in the first-person perspective from the vantage of Aura, a 16-year-old girl. Because of her age, Aura sees the world as a child, yet her own experiences of dealing with ghosts and death have given her an unusual maturity. In the first chapter a ghost tells her that her eyes are old, and she thinks she has seen everything, but she doesn't know what it's like. Someday she will lose something important, and then she will know. This sums up the perspective of the book.

Aura is a girl who is interested in science and music. She also has a kind heart and reaches out to help ghosts even when she wants to run away from them. Since the book is written from her perspective, the reader gets a clear understanding of her thought process and growth...