The Great Ghost Rescue Book

Well, for the most part, I have found Eva Ibbotson's 1975 children's novel The Great Ghost Rescue fun and engaging (full of both laugh out loud and sly humour as well as being imbued with just enough mild icky creepiness, but also presenting much wisdom and many important but never in my opinion too overly didactic messages regarding ecology and especially promoting an appreciation of and for history and that older buildings, castles and such should not automatically be considered as passé, as needing to be modernised or worse, actually needing to be torn down to make room for newer and supposedly therefore better and superior constructions and buildings).

And yes, for a middle grade novel, The Great Ghost Rescue is actually surprisingly nuanced and with for the most part good if not delightful character development. For I do love how young Rick not only immediately takes charge and tries to start working on a plan to recuse the United Kingdom's displaced ghosts and to find them a government ordained official sanctuary (as so many of them are being turned out of their ancestral castles and homes due to modernity, so-called evolution and development) but that Rick is also willing and able to challenge his own beliefs and to make changes as necessary (such as for example, realising that his own consumption of meat is not really all that different from vampire bats needing to consume blood in order to stay alive), not to mention that at the end of The Great Ghost Rescue when all danger is past, when the exorcists have been trounced and order has been restored at Insleyfarne, Rick also makes sure that ghost friend Humphrey receives the accolades and praise he so richly deserves (for having gone to fetch Rick back to Insleyfarne at the proverbial nick of time) by stating that from now on Humphrey should be known as Humphrey the Heroic (that if Rick is to have the moniker of Rick the Rescuer, then Humphrey for his own courage at leaving by himself and indeed very ill and weak due to the exorcisms to search for Rick and tell him of Lord Bullhaven's treachery must now be seen and addressed as Humphrey the Heroic).

Furthermore and indeed, the only (and while minor still somewhat annoying) reason why I am rating The Great Ghost Rescue with a high three stars and not yet with four stars is that personally and from a textual and narrational point of departure, I do find the entire scenario that Insleyfarne is meant to be a trap and Lord Bullhaven not only a villain but a total and utter cardboard-like flat arch-evil entity par excellence a bit facile, a bit too one-sidedly out of the blue and unexpected. For while Lord Bullhvaven's treachery and his nefarious ploy to have all of the ghosts of Great Britain exorcised out of existence does I guess set the necessary stage in The Great Ghost Rescue for a final showdown and battle, and of course also for Humphrey to show his personal mettle and heroism, I definitely would much prefer it if the Insleyfarne trap and Lord Bullhaven's villainy and treachery were not so totally unexpected, in other words, that there should definitely be a few more obvious indications of potential evil and villainy provided by Eva Ibbotson right when we first set eyes on and meet up with Lord Bullhaven in the Prime Minster's office.