PUBLISHED 50 YEARS AGO
AUTHOR BORN 100 YEARS AGO
ACHUKA Book of the Day 25 Aug 2025
What fun I had reading this slim delight of a book to children in Y3 and Y4 during the 1980s.
This available 10-year-old edition a beautiful cover illustration by Alex T. Smith, creator of the Claude series, The Great Ghost Rescue is a wonderfully spooky young fiction title from the award-winning author of Journey to the River Sea, Eva Ibbotson.
‘Nobody knew what had gone wrong with Humphrey. Perhaps it was his ectoplasm . . .’
Humphrey the Horrible sounds scary, but he’s actually a very friendly skeleton, with twinkling eye sockets and jangling finger bones. Humphrey dreams of being ghastly, like his brother – a screaming skull – or terrifying, like his bloodsucking vampire-bat cousins. But when Humphrey discovers an evil plot to exorcise his family, he finally realizes you don’t have to be spine-chillingly fearsome to be a hero.
Here’s a great example from the first chapter of The Great Ghost Rescue. If you’re a person who hasn’t read it, now don’t you want to? pic.twitter.com/9Bk1Hza03n
— ProfoundlyTrivialDoodleBugIsBlueRU? (@Doodlebugisblue) January 21, 2025
A book that falls off a shelf is asking to be read, so tonight I’m (re)reading, ‘The Great Ghost Rescue’, by Eva Ibbotson.
— phantomb (@Phantomb3883) June 5, 2024
A fabulous endeavour. My favourite book when I was a kid was The Great Ghost Rescue by Eva Ibbotson. Freaky, weird & funny. Written in 1975 it had characters like Humphrey the Horrible, the Hag, George the screaming skull, Wailing Winifred and Hamish a Scottish ghost with no legs https://t.co/h9XB5nYtoZ
— NeilMackay (@NeilMackay) December 19, 2024
As a child, The Great Ghost Rescue was my favourite book & I can’t tell you how many times I read it! borrowed it from the library originally but my parents got my own copy in the end because I used to get annoyed if someone else borrowed it! 53 now & still have my battered book
— Anne Coddington (@medievilbabe) November 24, 2023
The Great Ghost Rescue is still a top comfort read, almost 50 years since I first found it. The Hag and the Gliding Kilt, what a love story!
(The Eagle of the Ninth is another comfort read from back them) #BookTwitter— Ruthie Hayes (@ruthiehayes67) November 2, 2023
We’re raising a glass today to my brilliant grandma, Eva Ibbotson, whose books continue to bring joy to so many. She was born exactly 100 years ago, in Vienna. “There are those who dance the notes, and those who dance the music.” pic.twitter.com/UHv3cq967o
— Theo Bosanquet (@TheoBosanquet) January 21, 2025
Looks like our new Eva Ibbotson books have gone down well! The basket was empty within minutes! @ArboPrimary #ReadfortheStars @_Reading_Rocks_ pic.twitter.com/7aJOvZNkaG
— Mrs N (@JessNaylor_) June 8, 2023
Leave a Reply