Ghosts Don't Eat Potato Chips (Bailey School Kids #5) (U)

Spooky things are happening in Aunt Matilda's house. Potato chips on the floor are spelling out secret messages and forming trails. And if Aunt Matilda is snoring in her bed, then who is whistling a tune? There must be a ghost in Aunt Matilda's house.Children's LiteratureCranky Great Aunt Mathilda has the flu, and poor Eddie's been asked to bring her dinner and help out around the house, but he seems to have caught the cranky bug himself. Eddie's friend Howie comes the first afternoon to help and notices a strange shadow in the attic window of the old house, rumored to be haunted, where Great Aunt Mathilda lives alone. Then Howie finds his potato chips spilled, and spelling attic on the ground. But Eddie stubbornly refuses to believe anything is out of the ordinary, even when Liza and Melody get in on the action and notice more mysterious coincidences. Because all of the mysterious clues point the children to the attic, Eddie's friends try to convince him that he needs to check the attic for the ghost of his Great Uncle Jasper for fear that whoever was haunting the house might attack his Great Aunt Mathilda. John Steven Gurney's line drawing illustrations add nicely to the story, while still leaving room for imagination as readers transition from picture books to chapter books. Eddie's whining and stubbornness can get a little tiresome, but otherwise, this ghost story moves along at a steady pace with mostly likeable and believable characters and a plot that will easily maintain the young reader's interest. This is the fifth book in The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids.