Ghost Buddy – How to Scare the Pants Off Your Pets

Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver's How to Scare the Pants Off Your Pets is a funny ghost story for 7 year olds about a ghost who's just been grounded.

What happens

Billy Broccoli shares his bedroom with the Hoove, a ghost who's been haunting the place for ninety-nine years and who only Billy can see. The Hoove is not easy to live with. He's vain, he's rude and he has hundreds of numbered rules, mostly about himself.

He's also allergic to paint fumes. So when Billy and his stepdad Bennett start painting the bedroom, the Hoove sneezes so hard he blows Bennett's wig clean off! (Billy had no idea his new stepdad was bald.)

The Hoove floats off to cause trouble around the neighbourhood instead. But the Higher-Ups, the ghostly grade-givers who keep an eye on everything he does, have had enough. He's failing Responsibility to Others. So they ground him, with invisible walls that won't let him leave the house.

That's bad news for Billy too. A cross ghost stuck indoors all day makes life very awkward, and Billy ends up sleeping in the hallway after the Hoove messes with his stepsister Breeze's precious guitar.

Then Billy has an idea. Looking after a pet teaches you responsibility, doesn't it? So off he goes to the pet shop with twelve dollars and forty-three cents, and comes home with a gecko called Berko.

There's just one problem. Animals are terrified of the Hoove.

It's a great one to read aloud. The Hoove talks in a very grand way ("that's the kind of power I possess"), and Billy's dry replies are even funnier. There's a whole new family to get used to as well, with a stepdad who compares everything to teeth and a stepsister who writes truly terrible songs.

Some of the humour is the mildly rude kind. A bird does its business on the Hoove's shoulder, and there's a joke about Bennett's bottom when he bends over. So it's ideal for a reader who finds that hilarious (and plenty do!).

What to read next

If they'd like to see how Billy and the Hoove first met, Zero to Hero is the place to go, with Billy refusing to get out of the car on moving day and then discovering his new bedroom already has someone in it.