Phil Hickes’s The Haunting of Aveline Jones is a properly spooky ghost story for 9 year olds about a girl who buys an old book with its last story scribbled out.<\/p>\n
Aveline LOVES ghost stories. Her mum wishes she’d read about literally anything else.<\/p>\n
It’s a freezing October half-term and Aveline has been packed off to stay with her very strict Aunt Lilian in Malmouth, a quiet town on the Cornish coast. There’s no TV, the phone signal is hopeless and there’s a horrible Halloween scarecrow in a garden down the road.<\/p>\n
Then she finds a dusty little bookshop down some steps. The owner, Mr Lieberman, sells her a rare book of local ghost stories for one pound. Inside the cover is a girl’s name, Primrose Penberthy. And the final story has been crossed out, line by line, so nobody can ever read it.<\/p>\n
Who would do that? And why?<\/p>\n
When Aveline looks Primrose up, she finds out she went missing from Malmouth on Halloween night over thirty years ago. And nothing she can find says she was ever found.<\/p>\n
Aveline is a lovely heroine for a nervous but nosy reader. She’s shy, she goes red at everything and she’s a bit homesick, but she still can’t leave a mystery alone. Mr Lieberman’s great-nephew Harold (floppy fringe, not much of a talker) makes a good partner in crime too.<\/p>\n
The creepy moments build slowly. A mocking little laugh in the night. A small girl standing in the stormy sea who nobody else seems to notice. Scratching at the kitchen window at 3am, and in the morning, what looks very like a child’s handprint on the glass. It’s the sort of chill that’s best enjoyed under a duvet!<\/p>\n
Just so you know, this is a genuinely scary story about a missing child, and the chills build steadily. It’s probably best for children who actually enjoy being frightened (the ones who ask for the scary bit again). A child who struggles with bad dreams may find it too much.<\/p>\n
Desperate for more of Aveline afterwards? The Bewitching of Aveline Jones takes her to a summer cottage beside an ancient stone circle, where a mysterious girl on a black horse is waiting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Phil Hickes’s The Haunting of Aveline Jones is a properly spooky ghost story for 9 year olds about a girl who buys an old book with its last story scribbled out. Aveline LOVES ghost stories. Her mum wishes she’d read about literally anything else. It’s a freezing October half-term and Aveline has been packed off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13367,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":8851,"lr_next_read_anchor":"The Bewitching of Aveline Jones","lr_seo_hook":"An old ghost book, a crossed-out story and a girl missing since 1984."},"book_tag":[22],"age_group":[24],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[795],"class_list":["post-9113","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-mystery-books","age_group-books-for-9-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-phil-hickes"],"yoast_title":"The Haunting of Aveline Jones by Phil Hickes | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"An old ghost book, a crossed-out story and a girl missing since 1984. For ages 9+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n