With Halloween approaching, There’s a Ghost in This House arrives in paperback. Author Oliver Jeffers explores the fears we create ourselves through a game.
Plot Summary
A little girl invites the reader into her grand house, which hasn’t welcomed visitors for a long time. The girl hears noises and begins to identify their source. As she walks through the house, she thinks about what ghosts look like, whether they are white, have holes instead of eyes, or prefer dark rooms. Even though she searches the rooms carefully, the ghosts outsmart her. When she looks on top of the bed, they are underneath; when she searches between the books on the shelves, they calmly read behind her. Only the reader can see the ghosts, and they are transformed from observers to participants in the story.
Themes, Illustration and Writing Style
Oliver Jeffers creates a game of hide-and-seek using photographs of a colonial-style house built in the 18th century. An interesting method is incorporating the characters within the photographs, creating an atmosphere that is both realistic and fantastical. The characters are presented in the author’s typical minimalistic style, childlike, with stick legs, as in his well-known books How to Catch a Star and Lost and Found. The text is kept to a minimum, emphasising the visual rather than the written word. The text appears on the second page, giving young readers opportunities to explore first and then read. This predictability creates a sense of calm for young children, who may be entertained, yet still feel and identify with the heroine’s fear and imagination.
Final Thoughts
There’s a Ghost in This House is seasonal EYFS and KS1 reading that celebrates the spooky without being too frightening.
The Stats:
- Title: There’s a Ghost in This House
- Author and Illustrator: Oliver Jeffers
- ISBN: 978-0-00-841331-6
- Publication Date: 2026
- Page Count: 32
- Publisher: HarperCollins Children’s Books
- Recommended age: 4-7
- Categories/Topic: Halloween, ghosts
Where to Find it:
- Buy on: Bookshop UK
- Buy on: Amazon
More children’s picture books about Halloween
- Pumpkin Moon by Tim Preston and Simon Bartram; set in the USA, it explores supernatural fears from an adult’s perspective. Pumpkin Moon offers beautiful illustrations from the creator of Man on the Moon. For further details, read my review here.
- Funnybones by Allan Ahlberg and Janet Ahlberg
- Another also not too frightening title: Paddington’s Trick or Treat by Michael Bond
- The Café at the Edge of the Woods by Mikey Please
- The Skull by Jon Klassen
