Aunt Tabby’s big surprise

Excerpt: And then, because Aunt Tabby likes polite conversation at breakfast, I said, “Have you been having trouble with the boiler again, Aunt Tabby?”

“Yes, dear – but not for very much longer.” Aunt Tabby said, hardly moving her lips. I used to think that when Aunt Tabby spoke like that, she was practising to be a ventriloquist, but now I know it means she has made her mind up about something and she doesn’t care whether you agree with her or not.

“Oh, why is that, Aunt Tabby?” I asked especially nicely, while I covered my porridge with brown sugar and stirred it all in really fast so that the porridge went a nice muddy colour.

Aunt Tabby sort of gritted her teeth and said, “Don’t do that with the sugar dear. Because we’re moving, that’s why.”

Not much stops me digging mud ditches in my porridge – you know, the ones where you scrape a channel through it and it fills up with runny brown sugar, which I think looks just like mud – but that did.

What’s the book about

Araminta Spook lives in a creepy old house called Spookie House with her Aunt Tabby and her uncle Drac. Araminta lives here because when she was a baby, her parents went to Transylvania to hunt vampires and never came back.

Araminta loves to think Spookie House is haunted and desperately wants to see a ghost. However, no matter how much she searches the house for a ghost, she cannot find one. The house is old, big and spooky, and it is falling apart in many places. It is so big that Araminta can sleep in a different bedroom every day of the week. The house has several kitchens too. Her uncle Drac lives in the turret, where he has removed the floors so that his bats can fly about unhindered. He sleeps in a sleeping bag that hangs from the rafters.

One morning at breakfast, Aunt Tabby drops a bombshell. She is going to sell the house. Araminta is devastated. She loves this old spooky house. She thinks up a devious plan. She must chase away potential customers by proving that the house was haunted. As luck would have it, she discovers a secret passage that leads to her many mysterious rooms. She also finally gets to meet her first real ghost – a boy named Edmund.

Would you like this book?

If you enjoy reading something light and funny, then you certainly will. It is also a ghost story without being scary. It is ridiculous yet charming. The cherry on top is the wonderful illustrations.