Ghostly Fun at the Princeton Children's Book Festival

Margery Cuyler didn’t have to do a lot of research when writing about a haunted house—aside from living in a haunted house for most of her life.

Cuyler grew up in a house called the Barracks on Edgehill Street. She says it’s the oldest house in Princeton and that its features include a dungeon and secret passages. George Washington used the home as a barracks during the Revolutionary war and legend has it that the home is haunted by a Hessian soldier who died from a chest wound during the Battle of Princeton.

Cuyler and her husband bought the house in 1990 and in 1990 she wrote “The Battlefield Ghost,” a chapter book about a family that moves into a house just like the Barracks, complete with a Hessian ghost.

The book was originally published by Scholastic in 1999, and now Cuyler has self-published a new edition through CreateSpace, the self-publishing division of Amazon.

The book’s illustrations are by Cuyler’s sister, Juliana McIntyre, who studied art at Cooper Union in New York City and was a co-founder of Princeton Junior School and its director for more than 20 years. McIntyre claims to have seen the ghost as a child, making her, Cuyler jokes, a first-hand-resource.

“She said she’d do it so it was fun because it was two sisters working on a book together,” Cuyler says.

“The Battlefield Ghost” will be on sale during the Princeton Children’s Book Festival at the Princeton Public Library on Sept. 10. Cuyler will be one of the many authors and illustrators signing their books and talking with their fans. She has participated in each festival, starting in 2007, and has seen it grown over the years.

“Each year it gets much bigger and more ambitious,” she says. “This year there are 60 authors and illustrators signing, but I think the first year it may have been more like 20. It’s grown and it has some really top people in the field who are coming, which is great. And I think it’s a good fundraiser for the library.”

Cuyler decided to self-publish a new edition of “The Battlefield Ghost” when Scholastic decided to sell it only through its book club. The fact that it’s based on a local legend and offers some history and a ghost story has made it popular in the area.

“So the book has always done really well in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where Princeton history and New Jersey history and Revolutionary War history is taught in fourth grade,” she says. “And I get lots of letters from kids on this particular book, I think because it’s a combination of a ghost story and historical fiction.”

Writing a successful ghost story for young readers meant keeping the fright factor low and fun.

“It’s not too scary, in fact a lot of the reviews said it was successful precisely because it wasn’t too scary but it did have a ghost in it and it has sort of a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter,” Cuyler says. “It also has quite a bit of history woven into it.

Although the Barracks reportedly underwent an exorcism in the 1940s before Cuyler’s family bought the house, she says that on Christmas Eves, visitors would come to the house to test the legend that the soldier ghost climbed the chimney every year on that date.

Cuyler herself has never seen the ghost, but she and her husband just might have heard it shortly after they bought the house.

“We were asleep and we woke up because someone opened the front door and came into the house and walked up the stairs and walked to the back of the house,” she says. “We couldn’t figure out what it was, we thought maybe it was our dog or our kids or something but they were all asleep.

“We thought it must be a burglar, so we worked up our courage and we went through the whole house and couldn’t find a trace of anyone. So then we thought,  maybe it was the ghost because he’s supposed to come up the chimney on Christmas Eve so he’s restless.”

Other than that, though, she’s never seen any evidence of a spirit sharing her home.

Cuyler has written more than 45 books, with her newest ones being the picture books “The Little Dump Truck,” for the youngest of readers, published by Henry Holt/MacMillan, and “I Repeat, Don’t Cheat” for readers 4 to 8, featuring Jessica, a first-grader who’s prone to worrying.

One of her most popular books, she says, is “Skeleton Hiccups,” which is summed up by its title. It’s never been out of print and sells year after year, especially at Halloween time.

“It’s still puzzling to me why kids like that book so much , they think it’s funny that a skeleton hiccups,” she says. “It’s so simple, it’s such a simple book. But they like it, and the artist (S.D. Schindler), I think, added a lot to the book. I’m very grateful that the illustrations are so terrific.”

Among the authors appearing at this year’s festival is Sophie Blackall, who illustrated the popular “Ivy and Bean” books. Blackall also illustrated the poster for this year’s festival, which features both characters reading. Of course, the very proper Ivy is sitting with her legs crossed holding a book, while the rambunctious Bean is hanging upside down on a trapeze as she takes in a book.

Other participants this year include John Bemelmans Marciano, who continued the tradition of “Madeline” books started by his grandfather, Ludwig Bemelmans, Brett Helquist, illustrator of “Lemony Snicket”, and writer/illustrator Dan Yaccarino, whose books include “All the Way to the America,” “Go, Go America” and “Unlovable.”

The Princeton Children’s Book Festival will be held at the Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon St., Princeton, on Sept. 10, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The event will be held inside the library and on Hinds Plaza. For information, go to http://princetonlibrary.org/children/festival.