This is an enchantingly beautifully, but straight forward, little hard back that is aesthetically pleasing to hold and which focuses on Araminta Spook, affectionately known as Minty who lives with her Aunt Tabby. The ink drawings are certainly a winning point in the book. Her aunt Tabby is definitely not right in the head and spends a large part of the novel yelling at and complaining about the boiler in the basement of the humungus, gothic house which they share with Sir Horace, a somewhat boring, but secretive,old suit of armour. Araminta's uncle Drac, who is also somewhat dysfunctional, sleeps upside down in a sleeping bag suspended from the ceiling along with some random bats. We don't hear a great deal from him I might add. Why is Araminta there? Well, it seems that her parents have strangely disappeared whilst hunting for vampires in Transylvania. Her aunt desperately wants to sell the house and to a find a more comfortable and less sooty abode. This is a very quirky story which has some simplistic elements of a Tim Burton production. Araminta is reminiscent of Wednesday Adams and spends the majority of her spare time searching for ghosts and laying traps for unsuspecting visitors who come to inspect the house. Araminta attempts to sabotage the house sale and much to her delight, discovers a strange key which leads the reader on through the rest of the plot to the balconie!. This is a basic and reasonably satisfying read but not much decoding is required. Truthfully, it was the illustrations by Jimmy Pickering which kept me turning the pages.
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