The House of Dies Drear written by Virginia Hamilton and published in 1968 follows Thomas Small, a young boy who is moving with his family from North Carolina to Ohio. The Smalls are moving into an old house that was used as a part of the Underground Railroad that comes with an old, scary groundskeeper, hidden compartments and passages, and many mysteries and secrets. Thomas and his family must figure out if the hauntings that are rumored to happen are real, or if there is something else going on relating to the past.
While you could teach this in a middle school classroom, I don’t know if it’s a necessarily good choice. At times I felt like the story was very confusing and a little outdated. I didn’t think that students could relate to it, the main character was very distant and it’s not set in a time that is accessible to students, I'm not sure they would be interested. It would be a good novel to read during maybe an African American history unit or maybe a unit on devices writers use such as imagery, simile, and metaphor because there are many good examples of those.
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