Skeleton Keys: The Haunting of Luna Moon by Guy Bass
“Warning: contains spoilers for Book 1. Having read and reviewed the first in this series, The Unimaginary Friend, just a few days ago, the plan was to save this read for a little while so that I had it to look forward to. However, having had the metaphorical carrot of book 3 – The Legend of Gap-Tooth Jack – dangled in front of me yesterday, I bumped this straight to the top of my TBR pile because I always try to read books in order before I take them in to school, so that I can advise my class if doing so is necessary for maximum reading pleasure. At the risk of patronising anyone as yet unfamiliar with the series, Skeleton Keys is – well – a skeleton, with magical keys as fingers which allow him to open doors to a wide variety of hidden worlds. His raison d’être is to deal with unimaginary friends – the imaginary friends (IFs) of children who have become unimagined and who left to their own devices have the potential to cause a great deal of mayhem. Keys starts his narration by telling us the sad tale of a young boy living alone at Haggard Hall, with no one to care for him and only his wild imagination for company. Under these sorry circumstances he has created an IF called Mr Malarkey – a curious creature…chock-brimming with magic spells and flabbergasting tricks. Despite Mr Malarkey’s one wish being to make the boy happy, once unimagined the boy decides he wants to be alone and banishes him. Fast-forward umpteen years, and the boy has become a spiteful and miserable old man with a family of his own. Following his death, only his grand-daughter Luna mourns his loss and we join her and her family shortly after the funeral where Luna hears her late grandfather. With Luna convinced that the house is now being haunted, Skeleton Keys arrives with his unusual appearance causing him initially to be mistaken for the old man. Once he has properly introduced himself he tells the shocked family that he is there as their best hope for survival as they are all in terrible, terrible danger. As in the first book, there are many fabulous plays on words such as the horridor – a cold and gloomy corridor filled with portraits of the grim-faced old man – and wonderful similes such as when Luna’s grandfather is described as ‘deader than dinosaurs at a disco’. Added to these joys are Keys’s customary exclamations of surprise, some of which are so wonderful that I am extraordinarily tempted to pinch them to use when I am back in school next week. In common with Keys’s first adventure, the story is crammed full of dark humour, which again is sufficient to be scary enough without being the stuff of nightmares. My new Year 5 class are sure to love this as would the Year 4s and a great many Year 3s. With The Legend of Gap-Tooth Jack to look forward to on October 1st, I will be taking a slightly longer break between reading the second and third books in the series, which should prove sufficient to allow for a great deal of anticipation on my part. Although I was yet again ‘late to the party’ in discovering these fabulous books, I will be joining a great many others in counting the days. Until then, it can only be a fantabulant 5 out of 5 stars.”