Goblins in the Castle

Bruce Coville's Goblins in the Castle is a funny, shivery adventure for 8 year olds about a boy who opens the one door he was told to leave alone.

What happens

William was found on the drawbridge of Toad-in-a-Cage Castle as a baby, wrapped in a blanket and tucked in a basket. The Baron kept him. Nobody has ever explained why.

He has the run of the whole place. There are secret passages behind the fireplaces and hidden rooms up the towers, and he's spent years finding them.

The one spot he can't go is the North Tower. It's locked, it has mist round it even on sunny days, and the grown-ups go strange and snappy when he asks about it.

Then he pushes a panel behind a giant clock and finds five hundred steps going down into the dungeons. At the bottom, singing to himself, is Igor.

Igor has a hump, a hobbling boot and a stuffed bear he made himself. He says he's lived in the castle for six hundred years. He talks about himself in the third person and he is absolutely delighted to have someone to talk to at last.

Igor is the funny one and the frightening one at the same time, which is a clever thing for a book to manage. One minute he's whacking you with a soft bear. The next his fists are clenched and you can see he could snap you in half.

Reading it feels like being let loose in a big empty house at night with a torch. William tells it all himself, flat and unbothered, which somehow makes the creepy bits creepier.

He's also very alone, and he'd rather say it sideways than say it. The Baron calls him Jasper. Then Gerald. He never gets his name right at all.

It IS quite dark in places, so a few facts. His nurse fell in the moat and was eaten by something. The housekeeper's favourite story is about the old woman who cut off her finger in the night. Voices moan in the corridors and by Halloween they're calling William's name and begging him to unlock the tower.

If your child likes being a bit scared, this is a treat, because the fear keeps turning into a joke. If they're the sort who hears noises after lights out, maybe read the Halloween chapter alongside them and see how they go.

What to read next

There's more of Igor and the castle in Goblins on the Prowl, which is told by Fauna, a girl who lives on her own in the forest and knows more about goblins than she's letting on.