Synopses & Reviews
Ever since the morning Molly woke up to find that her parents hadvanished, her life has become filled with terrible questions. Where have her parents gone? Who is this spooky old man who's taken her to live with him, claiming to be her great-uncle? Why does he never eat, and why does he lock her in her room at night? What are her dreams of the Skeleton Man trying to tell her? There's one thing Molly does know. She needs to find some answers before it's too late.
Review
“An incredibly scary story that will make hearts beat and brows sweat.” School Library Journal (*Starred Review*)
Review
“The legend is chillingand the terror builds on every page. This book gave ME nightmares!” R. L. Stine
Review
“Reluctant as well as eager readers will relish this fast-paced supernatural chase.” Kirkus
Synopsis
A chilling, own-voices middle-grade novel featuring a brave young girl, missing parents, and a terrifying stranger, based on a Native American legend.
Molly's father, who grew up on the Mohawk Reserve of Akwesasne, always had the best scary stories. One of her favorites was the legend of Skeleton Man, a gruesome tale about a man with such insatiable hunger he ate his own flesh before devouring those around him.
But ever since her parents mysteriously vanished, those spooky tales have started to feel all too real.
R.L. Stine, New York Times bestselling author of the Goosebumps series, raved, "This book gave ME nightmares "
About the Author
Joseph Bruchac lives with his wife, Carol, in the Adirondack mountainfoothills town of Greenfield Center, New York, in the same house where hismaternal grandparents raised him. Much of his writing has Native Americanthemes and draws on the land he lives on as well as his Abenaki ancestry.Although his American Indian heritage is only one part of an ethnicbackground that includes Slovak and English blood, those Native roots arethe ones by which he as been most nourished. He, his younger sister,Margaret, and his two grown sons, James and Jesse, continue to workextensively in projects involving the preservation of Abenaki culture,language, and traditional Native skills, including performing traditionaland contemporary Abenaki music with the Dawnland Singers.
He holds a B.A. from Cornell University, an M.A. in Literature and Creative Writing from Syracuse, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Union Institute of Ohio.His work as an educator includes 8 years of directing a college program for Skidmore College inside a maximum security prison. With his wife, Carol, he is the founder and c-director of the Greenfield Review Literary Center and The Greenfield Review Press. He has edited a number of highly praised anthologies of contemporary poetry and fiction, including Songs from this Earth on Turtle's Back, Breaking Silence (winner of an American Book Award) and Returning the Gift.
His poems, articles and stories have appeared in over 500 publications, from American Poetry Review, Cricket, and Aboriginal Voices to NationalGeographic, Parabola, and Smithsonian Magazine. He has authored more than70 books for adults and children, including The First Strawberries, Keepersof the Earth (co-authored with Michael Cadult), Tell Me a Tale, When theChenoo Howls (co-authored with his son, James), his autobiography Bowman'sStore, and such novels as Dawn Land, The Waters Between, Arrow Over theDoor, and The Heart of a Chief. Forthcoming titles include Squanto's Journey (Harcourt), a picture book, Sacajawea's Story (Harcourt), a historical novel, Crazy Horse's Vision (Lee &Low), a picture book, and Pushing Up the Sky (Dial), a collectin of plays for children.
His honors include a Rockefeller Humanities fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship for Poetry, the Cherokee Nation Prose Award, the Knickerbocker Award, the Hope S. Dean Award for Notable Achievement in Children's Literature and both the 1998 Writer of the Year Award and the 1998 Storyteller of the Year Award from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. In 1999, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the America.
As a professional teller of the traditional tales of the Adirondacks and the Native peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, Joseph Bruchac has performed widely in Europe and throughout the U.S. from Florida to Hawaii and has been featured at such events as the British Storytelling Festival and the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, TN. He has been astoryteller-in-residence for Native American organizations and schoolsthroughout the continent, including the Institute of Alaska Native Arts andthe Onondaga Nation School. He discusses Native culture and his books anddoes storytelling programs at dozens of elementary and secondary schoolseach year as a visiting author.