The Robe of Skulls

Vivian French's The Robe of Skulls is a funny, spooky fairy tale for 10 year olds about a girl who gets locked in the cellar for smiling.

What happens

Gracie Gillypot lives with her stepfather Mange and her stepsister Foyce, and they're a truly horrible pair. Mange shuts her in the cellar whenever he catches her looking cheerful. Foyce pinches and slaps her. Supper has been water soup three nights running.

Then a small, fast-talking bat called Marlon swoops into the cellar for a chat. He has a job offer for her, and a little bag of powder that turns water soup into rich beef stew (and sends anyone mean-hearted straight to sleep). Soon Gracie is creeping off into the night behind him, heading for the Ancient Crones.

Meanwhile, up in her crumbling castle, Lady Lamorna is dreaming of a new dress. Black velvet. Spiders' webs. Rows of dear little skulls along the hem. Her treasure chest is empty, though, so she hatches a plan. She'll turn the royal children of the kingdoms into frogs and charge their parents gold to turn them back.

And in the palace at Gorebreath, Prince Marcus is bored stiff. His twin Arry is perfectly, boringly good, while Marcus balances buckets of water on doors and gets five hundred lines for it. So what happens when a runaway girl, a restless prince and a frog-happy sorceress are all out on the road at once?

A lot of readers will fall for Gubble, Lady Lamorna's servant of 170 years. He gets words spectacularly wrong ("That be magnifying!"). When she slaps him, his head falls off and hides its nose in a cobweb until it can creep back to his shoulders.

It reads like an old fairy tale told by someone with a wicked sense of humour. There's a stepfamily straight out of Cinderella, a sorceress who uses a coffin as a table, and a bat who says "Ciao!" Everything is a little bit dark and a lot silly.

Gracie's life at home is properly grim at the start, but it's played more like a pantomime than a tragedy. If your reader loves a heroine who stays cheerful out of sheer stubbornness, they'll be rooting for her from page one.

What to read next

This is where Vivian French's Five Kingdoms stories begin. If they're hooked, The Bag of Bones heads back to the same kingdoms, where Marlon's little nephew is watching the local witches when a very nasty visitor turns up.