Tag: Marvelous Middle Grade Monday

Marvelous Middle Grade Monday
Dying to Meet You (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009) by Kate Klise and illustrated by M. Sarah Klise is an unusual kid’s story. Part of it is the format: letters and documents exchanged about 43 Old Cemetery Road, Ghastly, Illinois and letters and notes from the occupants. The book has illustrations to accompany the text, including rental property ads, floor plans, sketches by Seymour, pages from The Ghastly Times (ads included), etc.
The other unusual part is that the cast of characters is not your normal cast for a children’s book. First, there is I.B. Grumply, who although a writer of children’s books, doesn’t want “to see or hear the little monsters.” He’s there to overcome his writer’s block in this quiet out of the way house he’s rented. There are some other adult characters introduced next, although they aren’t as important as Olive, who lives–well, since she’s a ghost, I guess hangs out would be more appropriate–in the supposedly empty house. Third, there’s an eleven-year-old boy Seymour who was deliberately left behind in the house by his parents! The other characters have appropriately humorous names that often fit their occupations, such as realtor Anita Sale.
Can you tell the story is funny? Plus it has a happy ending. It makes me smile every time I think of it. And it’s book one of the 43 Old Cemetery Road series. The other titles are: Over My Dead Body; Till Death Do Us Bark; The Phantom of the Post Office; Hollywood, Dead Ahead; Greetings from the Graveyard; and The Loch Ness Punster.
The author and illustrator are sisters, who share a website here. There you can find out about the other series they’ve done, the stand-alones, the picture books, and about the two sisters who collaborate while living in two separate states (California and Missouri).
I hadn’t realized I’d read and recommended another book by Kate Klise until I wrote this blog post. It was for Grounded.