Living Ghosts and Mischievous Monsters: Chilling American Indian Stories

by Dan SaSuWeh Jones Narrated by Wes Studi, DeLanna Studi

Overview

Perfect for fans of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark! A shiver-inducing collection of short stories to read under the covers, from abreadth American Indian nations.

Dark figures in the night. An owl's cry on the wind. Monsters watching from the edge of the wood.Some of the creatures in these pages might only have a message for you, but some are the stuff of nightmares. These thirty-twoshort stories -- from tales passed down for generations to accounts that could have happened yesterday -- are collected from thethriving tradition of ghost stories from American Indian cultures across North America. Prepare for stories of witches and walkingdolls, hungry skeletons, la llorona, and deer woman, and other supernatural beings ready to chill you to the bone.Dan SaSuWeh Jones of the Ponca Nation tells of his own encounters and selects his favorite spooky, eerie, surprising, and spinetinglingstories, all paired with haunting art by Weshoyot Alvitre of the Tongva Nation.So dim the lights (or maybe turn them all on) and pick up a story...if you dare.

Editorial Reviews

SEPTEMBER 2021 - AudioFile

Wes and DeLanna Studi narrate this collection of modern and traditional stories from a variety of American Indian tribes. Only mildly frightening, most of these stories are intended to teach traditions of caution, bravery, obedience, loyalty, compassion, and more. DeLanna Studi reads with a tone of nervous apprehension intended to instill fear and anxiety. Wes Studi has greater success using a slow pace and solemn tones to create the otherworldliness that often characterizes these tales. Five chapters include ghosts, spirits, witches, monsters, and the supernatural. The stories within each chapter begin with the name and tribe of the storyteller. Individual stories are contextualized with each tribe’s particular cultural beliefs. L.T. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

From the Publisher

Praise for Living Ghosts and Mischievous Monsters: Chilling American Indian Stories:

BCCB Blue Ribbon Nonfiction Book Award

Oklahoma Book Award Winner: Young Adult

Kirkus Reviews Best Middle-Grade Anthologies of 2021

New York Public Library's Best Books for Kids List selection

* "Valuable both for its broad range and shivery appeal." — Kirkus Reviews, starred review

* "As awesome as these stories are, what makes this book a real treasure is the context that Jones provides for each tale... It is an intimate and enriching reading experience that will be a boon to library shelves." — Booklist, starred review

"Full of alarming phenomena — flying heads, skeletons that leave bloody footprints, flesh-eating vampire babies — but the telling is done in such a way that we experience the stories as eerie anecdotes and folktales rather than as disturbers of our ease... With its intermittent chills, this collection will leave readers ages 8-12 with a strong sense of the supernatural as perceived and recalled in Native American communities." — The Wall Street Journal

"This crowd-pleasing anthology... [is] delivered without macabre flourish but packing a dramatic wallop." — The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

"A frightening ride via Native American storytelling... add to your library for a diverse cultural representation of scary stories." — School Library Journal

"The narrators, Wes Studi and DeLanni Studi, both members of the Cherokee Nation... imbue their delivery with the appropriate amount of tension, suspense, and excitement, and their steady, well-paced voices will make listeners feel as if they are sitting around a fire with master storytellers... A great recommendation for young listeners who appreciate legends and myths and are looking for something that will send shivers up their spines." — Booklist, audio review

"Illustrated with pen-and-ink illustrations, the book has the distinction of added to the coterie of nightmares accessible to your children. They’ll love it... Spine-chilling and horrific by turns, here’s the book to hand to the kid looking for some scares and thrills." — School Library Journal’s A Fuse 8 Production

School Library Journal

10/08/2021

Gr 4 Up—A frightening ride via Native American storytelling. Jones (Ponca) explains that these 32 entries have been handed down from a variety of tribes and storytellers across Indigenous country. This collection is divided into five sections—ghosts, spirits, witches, monsters, and the supernatural. Illustrator Alvitre (Tongva) provides unsettling yet age-appropriate visuals to accompany the selections. While most collections of creepy stories feature fictional tales, this volume is composed of scary reads that come directly from cultural and historical accounts, including the author's own. Each tale is prefaced with a short introduction on how it was shared with permission from tribe members and omits anything that should not be shared among non-Native readers. However, Indigenous students who follow these cultural traditions might still find some of the content to be taboo. VERDICT Reminiscent of Robert San Souci's "Dare to Be Scared" books or the ever-popular Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, add to your library for a diverse cultural representation of scary stories.—Danielle Burbank, Farmington, NM

SEPTEMBER 2021 - AudioFile

Wes and DeLanna Studi narrate this collection of modern and traditional stories from a variety of American Indian tribes. Only mildly frightening, most of these stories are intended to teach traditions of caution, bravery, obedience, loyalty, compassion, and more. DeLanna Studi reads with a tone of nervous apprehension intended to instill fear and anxiety. Wes Studi has greater success using a slow pace and solemn tones to create the otherworldliness that often characterizes these tales. Five chapters include ghosts, spirits, witches, monsters, and the supernatural. The stories within each chapter begin with the name and tribe of the storyteller. Individual stories are contextualized with each tribe’s particular cultural beliefs. L.T. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2021-07-30
A mix of 32 timeless chillers and personal encounters with the supernatural gathered from Native American storytellers and traditions.

Carefully acknowledging his oral, online, and print sources (and appending lists of additional ones), Jones (Ponca) intersperses his own anecdotes and retellings with accounts by others collected in his travels. The generally brief entries are gathered into types, from brushes with ghosts or spirits (the latter distinguished by having “more complex agendas” than the former) to witches and monsters. In them, the tone ranges from mild eeriness—hearing an elder relative on the porch just moments after she died and seeing small footprints appear in wet concrete near the burial ground of an abandoned Oklahoma boarding school—to terrifying glimpses of were-owls, were-otters, a malign walking doll, and a giant water serpent with a “sinister smile.” They all join the more familiar (in children’s books, anyway) likes of Bigfoot and La Llorona. Linked to a broad diversity of traditions spanning the North American continent, the stories, both old—there’s one ascribed to the ancient Mississippian culture—and those given recent, even modern settings, are related in matter-of-fact language that underscores a common sense of how close the natural and supernatural worlds are. In sometimes-intricate ink drawings, Alvitre (Tongva) amps the creepiness by alternating depictions of everyday items with grinning skulls, heaps of bones, and the odd floating head.

Valuable both for its broad range and shivery appeal. (introductory notes) (Traditional literature. 8-11)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173252845
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	09/07/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	1,257,529
Age Range:	8 - 11 Years

Videos