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Barry Hutchison's Spectre Collectors: Too Ghoul For School is a daft, fast ghost-busting comedy for 10 year olds about a boy who can see what nobody else can.
Denzel is stuck on his algebra homework when his rubber starts walking across the table. Next, a smoky thing with tentacles appears in the corner of the dining room. Then two teenagers blow a hole in the wall.
One of them has a very big gun. The other has a glowing third eye on her forehead and a habit of shouting its name. Neither of them can see the ghost, and Denzel can (which is apparently impossible).
They wipe his memory with a puff of glittery dust and leave. The next day at lunch the school bin explodes into a giant rubbish monster made of Coke cans and Wotsits, and it's after Denzel.
That's roughly when he and his best mate Smithy end up in the back of a van with the Spectre Collectors, a centuries-old secret society that catches ghosts. Samara does the magic (not always successfully). Boyle does the shooting and does not do jokes.
It's very, very silly in the best way. The girl tries a spell to get woodland animals to tidy up, like in Snow White. Within three minutes the sparrows are pecking the stag and two badgers are roughing up a squirrel with a can of furniture polish.
Smithy is the one your reader will quote. He has sinus problems he'll describe in detail to anyone who asks (and plenty who don't). He throws himself head first into a bin twice. He also takes some convincing that "an elephant never forgets" is about actual elephants.
Denzel is the calm one, mostly. The fun is watching an ordinary boy who's rubbish at maths get dragged into something enormous, with his mouth hanging open the whole time.
It's worth knowing the Spectre Collectors carry guns and point them at people, Denzel included. A teacher gets flattened by a rubbish-bin arm too. It's all played for laughs, more slapstick than scary. But if guns in a children's book bother you, you'll want to know before you hand it over.
If they're after another pair of friends who find out their ordinary town is hiding monsters, try The Bigwoof Conspiracy. Lucy sneaks out in a thunderstorm with a camera to prove there's something out in the Sticky Pines woods.
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