Dial a Ghost

Dial a Ghost by Eva Ibbotson is a spooky story for 7 year olds in which the ghosts are considerably nicer than most of the living people.

What happens

The Wilkinsons became ghosts in about two seconds flat when a bomb landed on their house during the war. Dad was a dentist. Grandma had a fierce umbrella. Eric was thirteen and halfway through a letter to a girl who didn't like him back.

They carry on much as before. Dad explains that ectoplasm can be strengthened just like muscle, so the whole family does knee bends and press-ups.

Aunt Trixie never turned up after the bomb. Every evening at sunset they go into the garden and call for her, north, south, east and west.

Then one morning they find a ghost girl asleep in a field. She's in an old nightdress with one slipper, holding a sponge bag with a toothbrush and a ghost fish in it.

She can't remember her name. She hears Aunt Maud say "adopt her", decides that must be it, and becomes Adopta.

That's the sort of book this is. Very funny, quietly sad, and completely matter of fact about being dead.

They lose their house in the end. People who can't see them put plates of scrambled eggs down on Grandma's head. People who can see them scream, which the family find deeply hurtful, because they have always kept themselves decent.

So off they go to London, which turns out to be absolutely stuffed with ghosts. Knights in armour hanging about outside takeaways. Wailing nuns in toy shops. The Wilkinsons end up living in a knicker shop.

And somewhere across town, a man called Fulton Snodde-Brittle walks into the Dial a Ghost agency and asks for the most frightening ghosts on the books. He would like his nephew Oliver dead of fright. He gets the Wilkinsons by mistake.

There is one big thing to know about here. A family is killed by a bomb on the first page, including a thirteen-year-old boy and the budgie. Grandma carries poison in her gas mask case in case of invasion. The little girl they find in the field almost certainly drowned. And the plot turns on a grown man trying to frighten a child to death.

None of it is dwelt on, and the tone is warm and daft throughout. But a child who worries about dying, or who has just started learning about the war at school, might take it more to heart than you expect.

What to read next

If they take to it, they'll get on with Ghosthunters and the Muddy Monster of Doom! next. Tom is eleven and sitting his ghosthunting exams, and the grown-ups on the examining board strongly disapprove of his best friend, who happens to be a ghost.