Rachel writes:

Hi, I was wondering if you might know the name/author of a book. I only know a vague description of what it was about, but maybe you could help me, I’ve searched the internet far and wide and found nothing. The book probably came out between the 1980’s and 2000, short, about 100-180 pages, meant for kids ages 10-14. The premise is a boy and his stepsister come home from boarding school for the winter holidays, and find that things are strange in their house. The boys grandfather created a famous board game that is monster themed, the grandfather is dead now and a portrait of him hangs over the fireplace. So the boy and girl (probably ages 13-15) start to notices that their family members have become the creatures from the game, and the house is all spooky. So every night they plan to meet up and figure out what happened to their home. Eventually they figure out it has something to do with the portrait and the christmas lights. That is pretty much all the plot details I remember. Random other things I remember from the story is that the boy and girls room is connected with either a crawlspace/closet, the girls favorite color is mauve and the boy hates it, when the boys alarm goes off it’s always dogs barking christmas songs on the radio, and I believe the butler is a frankenstein, and the girls little brother is I think the werewolf. I don’t know if that helps, or if you can help me, but if you come up with something please let me know. Thanks a lot!!! Hope to hear from you soon -Rachel

The board game made me think of Jumanji, but that’s a picture book… the portrait over the fireplace reminds me of The Canterville Ghost, but I know that’s not it, either- it certainly doesn’t come from the 1980’s, and is problematic anyway. There are any number of books that have a boy and a girl coming home from school for the holidays, and haunted houses. I just can’t think of one book that has all of those details included!

Can anyone help Rachel out?