Doll Bones

Doll Bones (2013) is a middle grade novel written by Holly Black and illustrated by Eliza Wheeler. It blends gothic, horror, and fantasy elements. The novel follows three friends, Zach, Poppy, and Alice, as their make-believe games take a turn for the supernatural, sending them on an eerie quest to return a haunted doll to a gravesite before it wreaks havoc on their lives. The novel explores the challenges of growing up and the strain it puts on childhood friendships.

Doll Bones is a 2014 Newbery Honor winner, a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award winner in Children’s Literature, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book, a School Library Journal Best Book, a Booklist Editor’s Choice Book for Youth, a Publisher’s Weekly Best Children’s Book, and a 2013 Goodreads Choice Award nominee.

This guide refers to the e-book edition published by Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, in 2013.

Content Warning: The source material uses offensive language to describe mental health conditions.

Plot Summary

Zachary Barlow, Poppy Bell, and Alice Magnaye spend their afternoons playing games of make believe with action figures in the gravel driveway outside Poppy’s ramshackle house. Zach plays the role of William the Blade, a rogue pirate aboard the Neptune’s Pearl, on a perilous quest for the Great Queen who rules their lands. Alice plays Lady Jaye, a thief accompanying William on his journey. Meanwhile, Poppy plays various villains attempting to thwart the brave pair on their mission, but never the Great Queen herself—a creepy antique china doll that’s not allowed to be touched or removed from Poppy’s mother’s old display cabinet.

Zach loves playing these games of pretend; they allow him to visit imaginary worlds, go on epic quests, and try on new personas. At the same time, he’s embarrassed of his hobby—which his father believes he’s grown out of—and worries that his middle school classmates and basketball teammates will mock him if they find out. Zach’s father has recently moved back in after three years of absence. He decides to dispose of Zach’s action figures without Zach’s permission, leaving Zach distraught and angry. Instead of explaining the situation to his friends, Zach decides to “grow up” as his father’s been pressuring him to do and quits playing with Alice and Poppy entirely.

Alice and Poppy are hurt by Zach’s decision. In an attempt to convince him to play one last time, Poppy offers to remove the Great Queen from her case without her mother’s permission. Zach refuses, but she removes the Queen anyway and is subsequently haunted by the ghost of Eleanor Kerchner—a young girl from 1895 who was chased onto her roof by her overly strict aunt and fell to her death. After her death, Eleanor was made into bone china by her father, Lukas Kerchner, a well-known potter working for a china manufacturer, and molded into the Queen doll.

Though Zach does his best to avoid Alice and Poppy, they visit his house in the middle of the night. They tell him that the doll is haunted and will make their lives miserable if they don’t return Eleanor to her grave in East Liverpool. Poppy claims to be having dreams of Eleanor’s ghost, who’s shown her exactly where they need to go. Zach agrees to travel with Alice and Poppy by bus to East Liverpool, Ohio, and back before their parents notice, as long as his friends promise not to ask him about playing the game.

Zach, Alice, and Poppy leave notes for their parents and catch the next bus out of town. Onboard, they are bothered by an unhoused man named Tinshoe Jones, who sees the doll as a real girl and believes the bus driver conspires with shape-shifting aliens. When he becomes touchy with Alice and Poppy, they escape the bus at the next stop and encounter a suspicious officer. They flee the bus station and into the nearest town, which happens to be East Rochester, Pennsylvania—two stops before East Liverpool.

Instead of turning back as Alice suggests, Poppy intends to see the quest through. Zach reluctantly wishes to as well. After spending the night off the highway outside East Rochester, the trio wake to discover their supplies have been strewn across their camp and destroyed. For breakfast, they head to a nearby donut shop where the shopkeeper seems to have a conversation with the doll and offers a donut to who he believes to be a blond little girl—the ghost of Eleanor. After arguing about whether to continue the quest or return home, the trio decide on walking to East Liverpool.

They eventually reach a dead end at a river that flows into the Ohio River. Poppy is determined to keep going and blackmails her friends into continuing, threatening to tell Alice’s secret to Zach. Zach channels William the Blade’s persona to steal a sailboat from the dock and sail to East Liverpool. By the time they arrive, they’ve missed the bus back, and Alice angrily throws the Queen into the river to spite Poppy. Zach fishes the doll out of the river.

Alice accuses Poppy of breaking her promise to get her home before her over-protective grandmother finds out. Poppy accuses Alice of not caring about the quest and blurts out the secret she’s been keeping—that Alice has a crush on Zach and wants to date him. Alice later admits she’s most upset about the fact that a random ghost is haunting Poppy, but her own parents haven’t bothered to contact her since their own deaths. The trio enter East Liverpool, where they find a diner to eat at; the woman behind the register sees the doll as a person once again, proving to Zach that, somehow, Eleanor is visible to certain strangers. They decide to catch the next bus home the following day and finish the quest that night by going to Spring Grove Cemetery and burying the Queen at Eleanor’s family plot.

Alice makes her first active contribution to the quest by sneaking in through a basement window of the local library, where the trio locate a map. They plan to go to the cemetery later in the evening, but they all fall asleep. They wake to a librarian named Miss Katherine, who keeps them in a room and forces them to call their parents. Alice gets in trouble with her grandmother, Poppy’s parents don’t seem to care, and Zach’s father surprisingly apologizes for throwing out Zach’s action figures and accepts his need to finish this final quest. They realize their doll is missing and break out of the room as Miss Katherine retreats to her office for work. They split up to scour the library. Zach heads to the basement, where he finds a display of Lukas Kerchner’s pottery and learns the details of her disappearance. Zach finds the doll in the girls’ bathroom and regroups with Alice and Poppy outside the library.

The three friends steal bikes and head to the cemetery, where they search for the willow tree Eleanor showed Poppy in her dreams. When their search turns up empty, Poppy loses confidence in the quest, and Alice and Zach become dejected. Zach confesses about the action figures and the true reason why he ended their game. Upset, he runs off. The girls find him sitting before the Kerchner family gravestone, which has the willow tree engraved on it. The trio bury the doll and say goodbye as their guardians pull up to the graveyard to retrieve them. Before they leave, they promise that while they’re growing up and will no longer be able to play their make-believe games, they can always continue telling stories.