SuitabookThe spooky school
Tracey Corderoy
- Reading
- Try the first story as a read-aloud, pausing to inspect the illustrations and unpack playful phrases or inventions. Then let the child choose whether to read the remaining adventures independently, together or in shorter sessions.
- Themes
- Crime turned towards helping: Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam are described as having exchanged a life of crime for baking and solving crimes, using their ingenuity to help others. The premise presents their earlier criminal life as a contrast with their current helpful role, but the treatment of that change beyond the basic setup is unclear.
- Spooky humour and uncertainty: The first adventure takes place at St Spectre’s school during Halloween and involves cheeky ghosts and a search for a suspected ghost. Supernatural ideas are framed through humorous, energetic adventure, while the mystery structure creates suspense around what is happening.
- Imagination through baking: The protagonists turn baking equipment and food into inventive tools, including a whisk-a-web, baguette skis, croissant walkie-talkies and a cupcake catapult. The stories clearly celebrate imaginative, comic uses of familiar baking objects as part of the characters’ adventures.
- Worth knowing
- The first adventure has a Halloween setting, cheeky ghosts and a hunt for a supposed lightning-strike ghost. The other stories are described as less consistently spooky, so a child’s response to the supernatural humour may vary.