Read Halloween Horror School free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Toby Glover's Halloween Horror School is a wildly silly spooky story for 10 year olds about a girl sent to the worst school in the world.
Lily would like everyone to call her Cookies (short for Cookie Monster, because she always has cookies). Her new teacher, Miss Miggs, has warts, fangs and a snake for a necklace. She is not calling anyone Cookies.
On day one, Lily gets a whack on the wrist for asking for help with some impossible maths. The books in the library have titles like "Making Chocolate Illegal". The bullies get the best lunches. And the principal, Mr Brown, turns out to be a clown with a custard pie for every naughty child.
It's all told by Lily herself, and she's brilliant company. She's cheeky, very stubborn and she swears everything she tells you is true (even the hippos behind the playground hedge). When she's dunked in a paddling pool of purple slime in front of the whole school, she decides the answer is to be so naughty they'll HAVE to expel her.
This is not a subtle book! It's gross, over the top and fast. Miss Miggs can make it rain on you and threatens to turn you into a rhino's bottom. The library is run by Skelly, a kind skeleton in a top hat who makes "happy juice" and keeps a bouncy castle tucked away at the back.
The football match is a highlight. Lily, her friends Josephine and Junior and the smallest kids in the school are sent out against a team of giant bullies. Who wouldn't cheer for the little ones?
Underneath all the slime there's a quieter thread. Lily lives with her big brother Sam, who left the army to look after her, and she mentions "the accident with my parents". It's backstory and only touched on, but a child who has lost a parent may notice it. There's also a lot of mean behaviour from the grown-ups, played for laughs.
For a reader who loves gross-out humour and a heroine who never, ever backs down, it's a lot of fun, with a countdown to Halloween running all the way through.
If they love the idea of children taking on a truly monstrous head teacher, Roald Dahl's Matilda is the classic. Miss Trunchbull marches through Crunchem Hall like a storm-trooper, and the children are warned never to answer her back.
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