Saturday, March 19, 2011

(PPS #2) Tobias and the Super Spooky Ghost Book by Tom Percival

Tobias and the Super Spooky Ghost Book by Tom Percival is our second Picture Book Saturday feature.  Check out the review below!





Night after night, Tobias the lonely ghost hangs around his empty house, longing for fun - but nothing ever happens.  Until one day a little girl moves in...Tobias can't wait to play some spooky tricks, but he might just be in for a few surprises himself!

Tobias is only small and he lives in this giant ramshackle home with a variety of far older ghosts.  He's lonely and he's bored. Until a little girl called Eliza moves in with her parents (they are alive).  Tobias sees this as the perfect chance to play various spooky tricks on Eliza.  And he wastes no time doing it.

Eliza is of course, as all little girls called Lizzie or Eliza, not that easy to scare and she very soon sees Tobias off with the very book of scary ghostly spells he used on her.  The tables are turned and Tobias runs off scared, until Eliza realises that the creatures she unleashed aren't going back into the book of spells.

All ends well though, thanks to a quick thinking Uncle.  And after extracting a promise from both young people to behave themselves things turn out okay.  Tobias and Eliza are initially tentative of each other but become friends quite quickly and get up to all sorts of mischief.

A great little picture book with truly wonderful illustrations by Tom Percival (whom I met and my copy is signed!) I really loved the wonderful illustrations and would quite happily frame some of the pictures for the wall.  They are bright and vivid and encourages young readers to look further than just what you can initially see on the surface.  I also loved that Tobias has the chance to make a friend his own age, even if there is such a big difference between the two of them (being dead and all) but I also loved that Eliza stood up for herself and gave as good as she got, even if she had to be saved in the end.

This is Tom's great website and find a cool Halloween party pack to download.

2 comments:

BookZone said...

This is on my ever growing To Review Pile. I loved it. Have you seen the fab work Tom Percival has done in creating the weapons images fir the Department 19 website?

Ynysawdre Elderly Residents Association said...

Great review. I love the sound of this book but wonder if it might scare the 5 year old a little bit?