THE GREAT GHOST RESCUE

Ghost Humphrey's problem is as old as Casper's--he just isn't horrible enough--and that really makes him a misfit in this mucky/gruesome family group where foul-smelling mom and legless dad (he's a Gliding Kilt) dine on rats' tails, and where headless Aunt Hortensia is learning to make rudimentary sounds from her pink and lumpy neck stump. The story is sweet as can be. . . with Humphrey and a live schoolboy, Rick, teaming up to create a sanctuary for ghosts squeezed from their old haunts by progress (sort of like what was done for the Indians), and eventually saving their friends from a mass exorcism organized by double-dealing Lord Bullhaven. You can bet that rats' tails, Aunt Hortensia's stump, and all the other grade school gore are what readers will fasten on, and in an odd way they are this silly farce's only saving grace. Yuk!