Living Ghosts and Mischievous Monsters: Chilling American Indian Stories

by Dan Sasuweh Jones (Author) Weshoyot Alvitre (Illustrator)

Reading Level: 6th − 7th Grade

Perfect for fans of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark! A shiver-inducing collection of short stories to read under the covers, from a breadth of 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-two short stories -- from tales passed down for generations to accounts that could have happened yesterday -- are collected from the thriving tradition of ghost stories from American Indian cultures across North America. Prepare for stories of witches and walking dolls, hungry skeletons, La Llorona and Deer Woman, and other supernatural beings ready to chill you to the bone.

Dan SaSuWeh Jones (Ponca Nation) tells of his own encounters and selects his favorite spooky, eerie, surprising, and spine-tingling stories, all paired with haunting art by Weshoyot Alvitre (Tongva).

So dim the lights (or maybe turn them all on) and pick up a story...if you dare.

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Paperback
$14.99

Kirkus

Starred Review

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. 

Dan Sasuweh Jones

Dan SaSuWeh Jones is the critically acclaimed author of Living Ghosts and Mischievous Monsters: Chilling American Indian Stories and was a storyteller and consultant for National Geographic Encyclopedia of the American Indian. A former Chairman of the Ponca Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma and former member of the Producers Guild of America, he is also a filmmaker who has produced work for Sesame Street, NBC, TBS, and other national and international networks. He worked as an honorary Imagineer and consultant for the Walt Disney Company's Disney America theme park and as a field producer for the television miniseries 500 Nations, produced by Kevin Costner. As a bronze sculptor, he was a finalist in the competition for the American Indian Veterans Memorial at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. He holds a seat in the House of Warriors, a traditional Ponca Warrior Society.


Weshoyot Alvitre is a female author and illustrator from the Tongva tribe of Southern California. She currently resides with her husband and two children on Ventureno Chumash Territory in Ventura, California. Her work focuses on an Indigenous lens and voice on projects from children's books to adult market graphic novels. She has recently been published as an artist in Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga, written by Lee Francis 4 and edited by Will Fenton; At The Mountains Base written by Traci Sorell; and was Art Director on the video game "When Rivers Were Trails." She enjoys spinning yarn and collecting antiques.
Classification
Non-fiction
ISBN-13
9781338681604
Lexile Measure
790
Guided Reading Level
-
Publisher
Scholastic
Publication date
September 07, 2021
Series
-
BISAC categories
JNF018040 - Juvenile Nonfiction | People & Places | United States - Native American
JNF052030 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Social Science | Folklore & Mythology
JNF008000 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Paranormal & Supernatural
Library of Congress categories
Tales
Indians of North America
Ghost stories
Supernatural
North America
JUVENILE NONFICTION / Social Science / Folklo
JUVENILE NONFICTION / Paranormal & Supernatur

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