Nightmare

By Joan Lowery Nixon

Book Overview

Does Emily's recurring nightmare hold a hidden truth This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0440237734
• ISBN13: 9780440237730
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: Yearling Books
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.1" x 7.5"
• Age Range: 8 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 3 to 7

Customer Reviews

Nightmare is an awesome book! Ella

This book is about a girl named Emily, who is nothing like her family. Her parents think she is not smart enough for school, so when they send her to and underachiever's camp in Dallas, TX, Emily is far from thrilled! Ever since she was eight years old, Emily has been haunted by a nightmare about murder. Now when she sees the camp, something seems familiar. Then she realizes, whet if the dream was not a dream? What if it is a memory that will put Emily in danger as long as she is at camp? This book is a page-turner, as anyone who reads it jumps out of his or her seat. Nightmare was a very, very good book that will stop your heart. This book was amazing! It was like a nonstop suspense movie. (If you like scary stories of course). I would definitely recommend it! READ IT! NOW!

Review

Emily Wood is having her recurring nightmare more than ever now that she has come to Camp Excel, a camp for underachievers. Emily is a 16 year old girl with curly almost white hair and ever since she was about eight years old she had a recurring nightmare that came would come back at random times throughout her life. She dreams that she is climbing through vines and tangles of honeysuckles. Then she sees the body. Every time the body is always there. At Camp Excel, Emily tries to stay alone but her friendly roommate, Haley, will not let that happen. Immediately Haley shows Emily her runes, which are stones with symbols drawn on them that are to predict the future of whoever draws them. We know something is wrong because the first rune that Emily draws is Loki, the Norse god of evil and treachery. Later she meets a boy named Maxwell who seems to like Emily and a unique girl named Taylor. Haley believes deeply in the runes even if Emily doesn't and on their field trip to town the go to see a curandero, or a folk healer. He also tells Emily that she is in danger and sells her a potion that she promises Haley she will keep with her at all times. When they leave the curandero they see Taylor walk out of a beauty shop with her hair just like Emily's. Emily isn't mad but she doesn't like the attention she is getting. Later Emily has an appointment with Dr. Isaacson, the founder of the camp and a very impressive educational center in Dallas. When she gets there no one is in the office but she sees two portraits on the wall, one of Dr. Isaacson and another of someone Emily knows, it's the face from her dream. Hours later she wakes up in the clinic to find that she had fainted. The nurse goes to get Dr. Isaacson and Emily falls asleep again. This time when she wakes up Haley is with her and not long after they here some sort of alarm. They run out and hear some kids talking about Emily. They go to the lake and see that Taylor had fallen into the lake and hit her head. Maxwell was the one who saved her because he was following her thinking it was Emily and Taylor went looking for Emily at the dock, remembering that Emily liked to go there. With facts provided they know that someone is after Emily and that she is in danger. Emily, Haley, Taylor, and Maxwell all go back to Emily's room and Haley perform a purification rite which is supposed to help protect them all. While they are doing this the candle they are using blows out although no one touched it and they cant relight it because there is no wick. Haley says this is a bad sign. They all agree that Emily will not be left alone no matter what. The next day they have a field trip to a cavern and there Emily is separated from the group with Dr. Anderson, one of the teachers. In the cave the lights go out and Emily finds out that Dr. Anderson has been the one after her. Emily takes the potion she bought from the curandero and pours it into Dr. Anderson's eyes. Seconds later many other teachers and students c

There is something about Camp Excel...

Sixteen year old Emily is less than thrilled to be on her way to Camp Excel, a camp designed to motivate underachievers. She is even more unsettled at having one of her reoccurring nightmares happen on her ride to the camp. In her dream, Emily looks right into a dead woman's face, floating in the water, staring back at her. What is it about Camp Excel that disturbs her memory, but won't let her remember? Suspense builds as Emily has a feeling she is being stalked. An ominous symbol casually picked from a roommate's rune collection adds to her apprehensions. As Emily pieces her memories together, she starts making sense of the murder in the nightmare she experienced as a child, and all the staff members in camp become suspect. When a fellow student at camp is attacked, Emily is sure she was the intended victim. The plot thickens and the suspense intensifies as the reader encounters intermittent chapters revealing the evil thoughts of an anonymous voice that works at the camp and is plotting Emily's demise. Joan Lowery Nixon has constructed a quick read, yet an intricate mystery, which readers should find appealing. Her characters are quirky, to fit in with the dysfunctional theme of the camp; but also trendy enough to be valid. There's Taylor, with her spiked pink hair; Maxwell, the procrastinating playwright; and Haley, Emily's roomate with a hyper personality and an obsession with fortune telling. Interjecting the anonymous voice in alternating chapters heightens apprehension and sets the reader to guessing. Emily is being stalked, but by who, and why? Nixon performs a great job of increasing the complexity of details without letting the reader be able to foretell the cullprit. Emily's initial insecurity gives way to reveal new found confidence, leaving the readers feeling she is on her way to a more successful future.

Nightmare

This is the best mystery book I've ever read.It was exciting, easy to read, and it never gave the answer to who was the killer. It was sort of like AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, because at any point in the book you couldn't tell who did the crime. The author also gave a great mysterious setting which makes it creepy . He also made the killer write journal entries every other chapter telling what and how he was going to kill but he never gave any clue to who he was. That made it even more creepy beasue he would say stuff in his entries like," how am I going to kill her, she keeps running away. I love this book.

Will keep readers involved from beginning to end.

Emily Wood is the main character in Joan Lowery Nixon's latest book, NIGHTMARE. She is a sixteen-year-old who has been dubbed an "underachiever" by her teachers and parents. They believe this stems from the pressure Emily feels to live up to her two near-perfect older sisters. But her feelings go much deeper than that. For years, Emily has suffered from a recurring nightmare of a dead body. She does not know who the victim is or where it's happening, but the nightmare is so vivid and strong that it has intruded her world while she's awake. To feel safe, Emily has begun hiding herself: growing her hair long so it covers her face, sitting quietly in the back of her classes, floating invisibly through life. Emily's parents want to see her succeed in school and in all areas of life, so they enroll her in a summer program called Camp Excel, a radical clinic that specializes in new techniques to reach those hard-to-reach kids. Emily doesn't want to go, but her parents leave her no choice. Once there she meets Haley, her too-perky roommate who believes in the Runes and fortune telling. She also meets Taylor, a girl with spiked hair that's dyed pink. There is also Maxwell, a playwright wannabe. During classes and therapy, Emily spies a portrait of the woman whose dead body she sees in her nightmare. This is when the trouble begins for Emily. Someone does not want her to remember that her nightmare really happened. This someone begins to hatch a plan to take care of Emily once and for all. There are many twists and turns in this novel; readers will not be sure of Emily's fate or who the killer in her nightmare turns out to be. Readers, like Emily, will have a very difficult time trusting certain characters. Emily is a believable heroine, and her chilling story will keep readers involved from beginning to end. Nixon has another winner on her hands with NIGHTMARE. --- Reviewed by Melissa A. Martin (Melissaenglish72@yahoo.com)