1. Title: The Wish List by Eoin Colfer, ISBN: 0-439-44336-9, The O’Brien Press Ltd., Dublin, Ireland, © 2000, $6.99, 252 pp. 

2. Genre: Fantasy/Supernatural fiction, Grades 7-9 (possibly 6^th grade).

3. Characters: The main character is Meg Finn, a young teenage girl who is coping with the death of her mother and must redeem herself on Earth when she dies unexpectedly. Belch Brennan is an associate of Meg who is nothing but trouble, and he also dies unexpectedly. He is sent back to Earth by Satan to stop Meg from redeeming herself. The other main character is Lowrie McCall, an elderly man who lives in a house that Meg and Belch tried to rob before they died. He is a pathetic and bitter old man that has had problems his whole life. This is the man that Meg has to help in order to receive redemption. 

4. Plot: Meg Finn and Belch Brennan are breaking into Lowrie McCall’s house to rob him. Belch has his pit bull dog along as a guard. They get into the house, but Lowrie wakes up and confronts them with a shotgun in hand. Belch has his pit bull attack Lowrie, and he drops the shotgun. Meg goes to the aid of Lowrie because the old man is bleeding pretty badly. Belch doesn't care and tells Meg to leave him, but she grabs the shot gun off of the floor to force Belch to help Lowrie. While Meg was thinking about what she should do, Belch took the gun away from her and was going to shoot her. Meg escaped but Belch and the pit bull gave chase. Belch cornered Meg in an alley and fired the shotgun in the air, but one stray pellet shot out at the gas tank behind Meg and blew all of them up.

Meg is traveling through a tunnel to the afterlife, and she somehow gets stuck in the tunnel. One of the tunnel workers, Flit, comes to her aid. He tells her she must go back and redeem herself because she is in limbo right now, which means she has done the same amount of bad as good. Flit gives her two power stones to keep her soul charged on Earth because she only has a certain amount of time before she must return. Meanwhile Belch and Raptor, the pit bull, go to hell because Belch is rotten to the core. The characters of Satan and Beelzebub discuss the reason why Meg isn’t in hell with them. Beelzebub calls up to St. Peter and asks if Meg made it to heaven, and St. Peter tells him she isn’t there. When St. Peter looks in his book, he realizes that her last deed of trying to help Lowrie McCall made up for her past bad acts. He too understands, that she was sent back to make atonement for her past bad deeds, so she can get into heaven. Satan wants Meg in hell, so he sends Belch back to Earth to stop Meg from making up her past wrong doings. 

As a ghost, Meg returns to earth and appears in Lowrie McCall’s house two years after the robbery and her death. Lowrie can see her, but he can’t believe it. Meg finds out after talking to Lowrie that he has a list of four events in his life that caused him to be miserable. If he could change these four events, he feels that he can die a happy man. Meg and Lowrie both realize that Meg must have been sent back to help Lowrie. The first wish Lowrie has is to kiss Sissy Ward, his first true love, because when he was younger he missed his chance to kiss her, and he lost her forever. She is a famous TV personality now, so Meg and Lowrie travel to the TV set so Lowrie can kiss her. Meg has the ability to enter Lowrie’s body to help him in his quest, so she takes over Lowrie while they are in the TV studio to get past the guards. Belch has found out where they are going and is also in the studio to stop Meg. Meg lets Lowrie take over, so she can hold off belch. Lowrie kisses Sissy and the feelings of goodness from the kiss send Belch hurtling back to hell.  

The second wish is that Lowrie wants to kick a field goal at an old rugby stadium to make up for a past fear he had. He couldn’t climb the fence of the same stadium with his rugby team when he was a kid, so Lowrie was caught outside the stadium while the rest of his team was inside the stadium. His teammates were kicked out of school, but since he chickened out, he didn’t get kicked out which, made him look bad in front of the other students. He wants Meg to help him get into the stadium, because he can’t climb the fence at his age. Meg enters his body again and helps him to climb over the fence. The problem is that they are caught by a guard of the stadium, but they talk their way out of it and the guard lets Lowrie kick a field goal. Meg has to enter Lowrie’s body again to give him the strength to make the field goal. Lowrie and Meg make the field goal, so he has two wishes completed. 

The third wish is to get revenge on Brendan Ball, a bully who threatened to take Lowrie’s clothes off in front of a bunch of girls unless he called Brendan “sir.” Lowrie never forgot that day, and now he wants to go to Brendan’s house and punch him in the face. Meg is worried because hitting someone will not help her get into heaven. They get to Brendan’s house and Lowrie finds out that Brendan has had triple by pass surgery. Brendan is a changed man, because he is very kind to Lowrie and he apologizes to Lowrie for the bullying incident. Lowrie is touched by Brenda’s sincerity, so he forgives him, and they become friends. When Meg and Lowrie finally leave, Meg asks if she can use his wish on her stepfather. Meg wants to punch her stepfather in the face for what he did to her mother and her. Her stepfather, Franco, is a lazy and mean man who treated Meg badly and hit Meg’s mother. Meg’s mother is dead and Franco was going to adopt Meg, so he could have someone to take care of him. Franco did nothing but sit in front of the TV and get drunk, so Meg had to take care of the house and do anything else that Franco demanded. The last straw was when Franco sold the ring that Meg’s mother had given to her to buy a new TV. Meg destroyed the TV and embarrassed Franco in front of his friends.  She ran away after that. Meg and Lowrie go to Franco’s house, but they don’t know that Belch beat them there. When Lowrie knocked on the door and it opened, Belch was in Franco’s body. With Meg in Lowrie’s body, she punched Franco right in the face. Before Franco was punched, he called Lowrie "Finn" which is what Belch used to call Meg. Meg realizes this and looks closer at Franco.  He sees Belch. Lowrie and Meg are able to get out unharmed, so they head out to complete the final wish.  

The last wish is to spit over the Cliffs of Moher, because it was mentioned in a song that his father used to sing to him at bedtime. The song said to live a full life, you have to spit over the Cliffs of Moher, and Lowrie needed Meg to make the climb. They reach the top of the cliffs, but before Lowrie could spit, Belch shows up in Franco’s body to stop them. He knocks Lowrie down and Meg and Belch begin to fight. Franco’s body has been used up by Belch, because Belch had to use up Franco’s life batteries to stay alive to stop Meg. Belch also had a small computer put in by Beelzebub to help him out and the computer kills Lowrie by stopping Lowrie’s heart. Since Franco’s body was used up, Belch had to return to hell, thinking he stopped Meg from completing her last wish. Meg realizes that both Lowrie and Franco are dead, and she has failed. Then Flit appears out of the tunnel that Belch went into and reminds her of the two stones that he gave her as extra batteries for souls. Meg puts one on Lowrie’s forehead, so he woke up and spat over the Cliffs of Moher. Then she put one on Franco’s forehead, and he is given life back. After that, she is taken back up into the tunnel. She finally arrives in front of St. Peter and he let her pass, reuniting her with her mother at the end.

5. Touchy areas: There are a few violent scenes but nothing graphic.  The idea of heaven and hell might be a problem for some religious and nonreligious groups.  

6. Related titles: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), A Wrinkle in Time (1963). 

7. Movies: Ghost (1990), Poltergeist (1982), The Sixth Sense (1999).

Music: The Battle of Evermore (1971) by Led Zeppelin, God Put a Smile Upon Your Face (2002) by Coldplay, When Worlds Collide (1998) by Powerman 5000.

Photo: Cliffs of Moher (Ireland).

Related websites: information on near death experiences (www.near-death.com), information on the afterlife (www.afterlife-knowledge.com).

Art: To Touch Heaven by Dale Terbush.

Poetry: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790) by William Blake.

Classic work: A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens.

8. Evaluation: I enjoyed the idea of good and evil battling over a troubled girl. Colfer gives life to the characters of Beelzebub, Satan, and St. Peter in an almost satirical way. I think most kids would enjoy the notion that heaven and hell are fighting over the souls of everyone. I would rate this book 9 out of 10. 

9. Reviewed by: Bob Masters, University of Toledo, adibob@buckeye-express.com.