NOTE: A school & library edition of this title is available. Find details at the end of the description below.

AJ Montgomery is about to do something he knows he shouldn't. He knows it's going to get him a lot of trouble, but when your three best friends are dissing you because you're afraid, then sometimes you make bad decisions-like the one AJ is about to make.

AJ isn't a happy boy. For one thing, he is mad at his mom. He's mad because four years ago she went away. She shouldn't have left him alone with his dad. Now there's just the two of them, and his father is even angrier than AJ. Neither has ever really dealt with their grief. Somehow they've confused anger with sadness. Most of the time AJ keeps his anger buried, but with his father, it's right at the surface-and twelve-year-old AJ is its target again and again. That's why he's mad at his mom, and that's why he's not very happy.

None of AJ's friends know about the grief AJ carries with him, and even if they did, they probably wouldn't care. They're just looking for a good time-like skateboarding through the local cemetery to torment the groundskeeper, a terribly deformed man they call the Keeper of the Dead. When AJ's friends goad him into a midnight trip to vandalize the cemetery and he gets caught, the police require AJ to perform 180 hours of community service in the cemetery with Mr. Hector Morales, who, it turns out, is none other than that weird old man, the Keeper of the Dead.

Nobody is happy with AJ's assignment at the cemetery. AJ's father doesn't want him going anywhere near that place; Mr. Morales has no interest in "babysitting troublemakers"; and for AJ, there couldn't be a worse punishment than being around the Keeper, who is as creepy as he is ugly. He even talks to the people buried there, and soon AJ will see him actually kiss a gravestone! But a strange thing happens: The longer he works with the Keeper, the more AJ sees something beyond his scarred face and hands.

NOTE: An academic and library paperback edition of AJ and the Keeper of the Dead is available which contains study questions at the end of the book. To order the academic edition, click on plus sign (+) to the left of "Paperback" in the "Format" box above, or if you have clicked on "Paperback, you should click on "See all 3 formats and editions").