Count Karlstein

Philip Pullman's Count Karlstein is a gleefully spooky Alpine adventure for 10 year olds, told by the maid who overhears the whole wicked plan.

What happens

Hildi Kelmar works at Castle Karlstein, up above a Swiss village, in 1816. She's not much older than the two girls she looks after. Lucy is twelve, Charlotte is ten, they're English, and since their parents drowned in a shipwreck they've had nobody but their uncle.

And what an uncle. Count Heinrich Karlstein bites his nails, reads German philosophy at midnight and takes a bright-eyed delight in being cruel to anything smaller than himself.

One evening Hildi goes up the spiral stair to ask him a favour and hears him say a name she's been frightened of since she was small. Zamiel. The Demon Huntsman, who rides through the forest on All Souls' Eve with hounds and skeletons behind him.

The Count has an agreement with him. This year the agreement runs out, and this year he has to hand over something living. He has already decided who.

Hildi doesn't faint and she doesn't dither. She goes straight to the girls.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The danger here is a man arranging to have two children in his care killed, and the story says so plainly and early. It isn't gory, and the villains are far too silly to be truly terrifying, but the idea itself is a cold one. A child who worries about grown-ups being untrustworthy may find that idea sticks. A child who loves being scared on purpose will be delighted.

Because that's the pleasure of it. Hildi tells the story herself, tartly, the way you'd tell a friend. She calls the Count's secretary a lip-licking, creeping little ferret. She watches the village sergeant nail up a wanted poster, step back to admire it and put his foot in a cowpat (she laughs, he blames her). Lucy and Charlotte lie in bed reading ghost stories to each other by candle stub and scaring themselves silly, which is very much what this book is doing to you.

What to read next

If your reader enjoys a guardian who is up to no good, The Bad Beginning is here too. Three clever Baudelaire children lose their parents on the first few pages and are sent to a distant relative who wants something from them.