The Last of the Spirits

Chris Priestley's The Last of the Spirits is a ghostly Christmas story for 11 year olds about two street children who get tangled up in Scrooge's famous night.

What happens

Sam and his little sister Lizzie are freezing, starving and sleeping wherever they can find. On Christmas Eve Sam asks a mean old man for a few coins. The man raises his cane and threatens to call a constable.

Something in Sam snaps. He follows the old man home with a length of lead piping in his pocket.

That night, sheltering in a churchyard, Sam watches a ghost rise up out of a grave. It's Jacob Marley, rattling his chains, and he tells Sam he's wearing a chain of his own. Three spirits are on their way to save a miser's soul. Sam's outraged. Why should old Scrooge get a second chance when nobody ever gave him one? ("It ain't fair!" he yells at the whole graveyard.)

Then the magic meant for Scrooge sweeps Sam and Lizzie up too. The first spirit takes them back to a house by a river, where their mum is singing to them under a willow tree.

If your reader already knows A Christmas Carol, there's a real thrill in watching the famous scenes from outside the window. The cheerful nephew, the clerk, the two gentlemen collecting for charity. If they don't, it works perfectly well on its own.

The heart of it is Sam and Lizzie. Sam's angry at the whole world and hard as iron. Lizzie still cares, even about the sad ghosts, and won't let him burn a book because "it's just too lovely". You'll probably be rooting for her to get through to him.

It's properly creepy, which is worth knowing. Marley unties his scarf and his jaw drops right down to his chest. The sky fills with moaning ghosts, and one woman has a rope mark around her neck (Sam wonders whether she took her own life). Sam plans to hit a man with that pipe. There's some mild swearing too. This sits right at the top of the shelf and it's best for readers who like a shiver and don't mind darker stuff.

For a reader who loves a good scare with a message in it, it's a brilliant winter read.

What to read next

If the churchyard scenes are the bit they love, Chris Priestley's Seven Ghosts takes a group of young ghost-story writers round Grimstone Hall, said to be the most haunted house in England, where all the ghosts are children.