Diary of an Accidental Witch 3 – Ghostly Getaway

Honor and Perdita Cargill's Ghostly Getaway is a giggly witch-school diary for 7 year olds about a class trip to a castle that might be haunted.

What happens

Bea Black is back at Extraordinary, the witch school in Little Spellshire, and she's catching up fast. She can levitate her friend Fabi up to the ceiling (and get him down again without dropping him). She scores six goals in the first GO match of term. GO is a broomstick sport, in case you're wondering.

What the whole of Year Seven really wants to know is where they're going on their school trip. When the answer finally comes, it's Cadabra Castle. It's hidden in a deep, dark wilderness, it's where the rules of GO were invented and, according to Hunter, it's haunted by a ghost ten times taller than a person, with two heads.

(Hunter tells a lot of fibs. The ghost gets bigger every time somebody describes it.)

There's a catch. Ms Sparks has decided this class badly needs to start pulling together, and she's not wrong. When Miss Lupo asks them to heal a model hand with spiderwebs, they argue so much that the hand comes to life and hops round the room spraying pretend blood everywhere!

Bea has a private worry too. Her dad is writing a book about Little Spellshire's peculiar weather, and she's suddenly realised that when he finishes it they might move away. So she buries his lucky pen in the garden and follows him round all day asking random questions. That's a very Bea sort of plan.

The diary makes it such an easy read. There are lists, footnotes and lots of CAPITALS, and you're right inside Bea's head as she swings from excitement to panic and back again. Her dad still thinks she goes to a perfectly ordinary school, so every chat at home turns into a bit of a juggling act.

For a reader who loves school stories with a sprinkle of magic (and a pet frog travelling in a sock), this is a lovely one to curl up with.

What to read next

If they're new to Bea, start with Diary of an Accidental Witch, where she first arrives in Little Spellshire and ends up at a very unusual school.