Book Review: My Haunted House by Angie Sage, Jimmy Pickering

My Haunted House is the first book in the Araminta Spookie children’s series written by Angie Sage and illustrated by Jimmy Pickering. The audiobook version is read by Katherine Kellgren. If you remember, I read the sixth book in this series, Gargoyle Hall, and felt like I had to go back and see how the whole series began. I was not disappointed. Araminta Spookie lives in a wonderful old haunted house, but her cranky aunt Tabby wants to move. Aunt Tabby is determined to sell their house and Araminta is determined to stop her! With the help of a haunted suit of armor named Sir Horace, a ghost named Edmund, and a lot of imagination, Araminta hatches a plot for an Awful Ambush that is so ghoulish, it just might work!

My Haunted House is a fun story that follows Araminta’s quest to keep her home. She is a quirky girl with a love for ghosts, spiders, and all things spooky. She is prepared for faking hauntings and exploring secret passages, while her Aunt Tabby is fighting with a boiler that does not want to work. Selling the house is the Aunt’s solution- but Minty is not taking the plan in stride. She does everything she can to stop any buyers from purchasing the house. The schemes are outrageous, and the discovery of two real ghosts makes the idea of leaving even less pleasant. Things get crazy, and messy, but when Minty’s plans do not work as planned the solution just might make things even better than she could have imagined.


My Haunted House is  a fun and sometimes silly story that will capture the imaginations of many children. I think reluctant readers and eager readers alike will enjoy the story, and be looking for more. The illustrations in the book are a perfect companion to the story, while the narrator in the audiobook does a great job with different voices for characters. Both are winners, and for readers that have trouble decoding books using the two in tandem could be a very useful strategy. 

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