CANDACE FLEMING

BOOKS

On the Day I Died

  

Schwartz & Wade, July 2012
978–0‑375–86781‑1
ages 11 and up

Please find this book at your favorite pub­lic library or used bookseller.

After you’ve read On the Day I Died, try this book:

On the Day I Died

Stories from the Grave

Ten ghost sto­ries for teen and old­er tween read­ers that are sure to send chills up their spines. Set in White Ceme­tery, an actu­al grave­yard out­side Chica­go, each sto­ry takes place dur­ing a dif­fer­ent time peri­od from the 1860’s to the present, and each one ends with the nar­ra­tor’s death. Some teens die hero­ical­ly, oth­ers iron­i­cal­ly, but all due to super­nat­ur­al caus­es. Read­ers will meet walk­ing corpses and wit­ness demon­ic pos­ses­sion, all against the back­drop of Chicago’s rich his­to­ry — the Great Depres­sion, the World’s Fair, Al Capone and his fel­low gangsters.

Reviews

  “Nine creepy tales told by dead teens and pos­i­tive­ly tai­lor-made for read­ing — or read­ing aloud — by flashlight.

“Flem­ing uses a ver­sion of ‘The Van­ish­ing Hitch­hik­er’ as a frame sto­ry and draws inspi­ra­tion from sev­er­al clas­sic hor­ror shorts, mon­ster movies and actu­al locales and inci­dents. With­in this frame,she sends a teenag­er into a remote ceme­tery where ghost­ly young peo­ple regale him with the ghast­ly cir­cum­stances of their demis­es. These range from being sucked into a mag­i­cal mir­ror to being par­tial­ly eat­en by a mutant rub­ber ducky, from being brained by a falling stone gar­goyle at an aban­doned asy­lum to drown­ing in a car dri­ven by a demon­ic hood orna­ment. Tasty ele­ments include a malign monkey’s paw pur­chased at a flea mar­ket, a spi­der crawl­ing out of a corpse’s mouth and a crazed florist who col­lects the heads of famous gang­sters. Amid these, the author tucks in peri­od details, offers one sto­ry writ­ten in the style of Edgar Allan Poe (‘As I pon­dered the wall­pa­per, its pat­terns seemed to crawl deep inside me, reveal­ing dark secrets … No!’) and caps the col­lec­tion with per­cep­tive com­ments on her themes and sources. Light on explic­it grue but well endowed with macabre detail and leav­en­ing dash­es of humor.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

“Dead men may tell no tales, but dead teenagers do. In this clever col­lec­tion of ghost sto­ries, 16-year-old Mike Kowal­s­ki dis­cov­ers an aban­doned ceme­tery for teenagers where nine 15- to 17-year-old ghosts tell him how they died. The sto­ries span 100-odd years and give a col­or­ful sur­vey of Chica­go through the decades and across class­es (‘Back in those days, Chica­go was lousy with funer­al homes, what with all them gang­sters run­ning around’). Flem­ing has been right­ly praised for her children’s non­fic­tion (Amelia Lost; The Great and Only Bar­num), and under­neath this group of chill-induc­ing tales lays a wealth of detail about Chicago’s his­tor­i­cal immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties, crim­i­nal under­bel­ly, the 1893 World’s Fair, and more. (Sneaky!) They also span hor­ror sub­gen­res that include campy ’50s sci­ence fic­tion, goth­ic (‘Lily,’ star­ring a lovelorn high school stu­dent in 1999, is a faith­ful homage to ‘The Monkey’s Paw’), and wry Hitch­cock­ian sus­pense; Flem­ing brings plen­ty of humor, too. The genre-flip­ping and var­ied nar­ra­tive voic­es pre­vent any sense of monot­o­ny. A wel­com­ing and well-writ­ten intro­duc­tion to many styles of hor­ror.” (Pub­lish­ers Week­ly, starred review)

“A boy dri­ving reck­less­ly down a coun­try road at night nar­row­ly avoids hit­ting the girl who steps out in front of his car. He takes her home — and ends up at her grave, begin­ning a night of spooky yarn-spin­ning as teenage ghosts gath­er to recount their death sto­ries. The nar­ra­tors include Edgar (1853–1870), whose mad­ness led to mur­der; David (1943–1958), whose demise came at the hand of a “com­ic-book nov­el­ty”; and Lily (1982–1999), who died of a bro­ken heart — and a bro­ken neck. Flem­ing roots her sto­ries firm­ly in time and place. Each teen speaks in the jar­gon of his or her day, and all the sto­ries take place in the Chica­go area. Ref­er­ences to Al Capone, the World’s Columbian Expo­si­tion of 1893, and var­i­ous sites and local lore give the tales a real-world speci­fici­ty that adds to their hor­ror. Because the sto­ries’ out­comes aren’t in doubt, the sus­pense comes from see­ing how it all unfolds. Flem­ing han­dles her tales with a light hand, going less for com­plex char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and more for thrills, chills, and, as in a sto­ry about a hoard­er, the occa­sion­al ‘eww!’ ” (The Horn Book)

“Late one dark night, teenage Mike Kowal­s­ki dri­ves to a desert­ed ceme­tery to return a pair of old-fash­ioned sad­dle shoes to a grave (don’t ask). Once there he is hor­ri­fied to find him­self sur­round­ed by the ghosts of the many teenagers buried there, all of them, er, dying to tell him their sto­ries. In one a wise guy uncov­ers an ancient curse; in anoth­er a boy enters a long-aban­doned asy­lum for the insane; in yet anoth­er a girl encoun­ters a hoarder’s House of Ush­er. Set in Chica­go, each of these nine eerie ghost sto­ries, Flem­ing explains, con­tains a ker­nel of truth about its set­ting — a city that, she notes, is ‘the spook­i­est place I know.’ Thus, in one sto­ry Al Capone makes a cameo appear­ance, and both the ceme­tery fea­tured in the frame sto­ry and the ter­ri­fy­ing old insane asy­lum real­ly do exist. It is the com­bi­na­tion of real­i­ty and imag­i­na­tion that lends a cer­tain grave-itas (!) to these nine spec­tral sto­ries. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Fleming’s books for young read­ers, be they non­fic­tion, nov­els, or pic­ture books, are always met with much antic­i­pa­tion.” (Book­list)