Mallory Vayle and the Curse of Maggoty Skull

Martin Howard's Mallory Vayle and the Curse of Maggoty Skull is a gloriously silly ghost story for 10 year olds about a girl who can see her parents' ghosts at their own funeral.

What happens

Mallory's parents have died when their carriage plunged off a bridge, and that's where the book begins, in the rain at the graveside. But Mallory has always been able to see ghosts, so Ma and Da are standing right beside her. They chat all the way through. Her dad gives his own funeral three out of ten.

It's a very funny way into a very sad situation, and it sets the tone perfectly.

Then a mysterious aunt appears in a black turban with a stuffed crow on the front. Aunt Hilda (she insists on Lilith) is a psychic who can't actually see a single ghost, and she takes Mallory home to Carrion Castle, a crumbling pile in the part of the city called Stabbings.

The castle feels wrong from the doorstep. That night her parents' ghosts vanish, and a voice calls her down into the dungeons, where she finds a talking skull in a chest.

Maggoty Skull is the star. He's been locked in that box for five hundred years and the first thing he wants to know is whether she has a wig on her (blond, ideally). Earrings too, please. He's rude and vain and never stops talking, and he tells Mallory she's a necromancer, which is the last thing she wants to be. If she wants Ma and Da home again, she'll have to team up with him, and deal with the wicked witch who owned the castle long ago.

The jokes come thick and fast, and the creepy bits are properly atmospheric. There are rats, cobwebbed passages and a boarded-up door with DO NOT OPEN THYS DOOR painted across it.

Heads-up on a couple of things. The whole story grows out of Mallory losing both parents, and although the ghosts are comic, she does cry. A child who has recently lost someone might find that hard going. There's also plenty of rude humour (her dad's old boss has a bum problem, and someone gets called a git), and Maggoty describes having his head chopped off in cheerfully gruesome detail.

For anyone who likes spooky stories that make them laugh out loud, this is a treat.

What to read next

If they want more ghosts turning up in an ordinary kid's house, Too Ghoul for School starts with Denzel stuck on his maths homework while his rubber walks across the table on its own.