Rating: WARTY!
Billy Broccoli has moved to a new home with his mom, which they're sharing with her new husband and his daughter. No word on what happened to his original dad. Billy is facing a new school and is missing his old friends (although why he can't visit them isn't explained), but he's not expecting that his new home is haunted by a ghost named Hoover.
I know this novel, the first in a series, is not aimed at my age group, but I found it to be far too black and white and simplistic to be even mildly entertaining, and Henry Winkler's reading of it left something to be desired. Maybe younger kids will like this because it seemed to me that it was pitched too low for middle grade. Cliche abounded and it was boring and predictable. Things were too disastrous to begin with, the pain-in-the-patoot neighbor kid was a ridiculous caricature (I can't imagine any cops even responding to a kid who calls them and reports a car being parked one inch over the no parking area, much less the cops having the car towed for that).
Billy does show some maturity in how he handles his revenge on this neighbor, but there was too much bullying and threats. It's stories like these which put a young kid's foot onto that dreary road to reality TV, sports is everything, and frat parties. if that's what you want for your kids, then have at it. I'd prefer something which has the guts to take the road less traveled instead of the lowest common denominator. I'd like to see some moral ambiguity, some gray areas, and some thought-provoking options which seem to me to be more age appropriate for the audience this book is aimed at. An approach like that that would have made for a much better story and a better educational experience for kids.
It's not like Winkler (or Oliver for that matter) is an unknown who doesn't have the mojo to ease a series like that through a publisher's door. Why would he need to take the easy way out as though he's some unknown children's book writing wannabe? For that matter, was the publisher so star-struck that they didn't want to look too closely at this? Whatever. I can't recommend this one. Winkler is dyslexic and I think he could have turned out better work than this on that and other such topics.
