Kate Culhane: A Ghost Story

Michael Hague has illustrated more than twenty children's classics, including lavish editions of A Wind in the Willows Christmas , The Wizard of Ox , and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland . He lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Grade 4 Up-Kate outwits a ghost and her own ill-fortune in this retelling of a traditional Irish tale set in the mid-1800s. After she steps on a newly filled grave, the dead man forces her to care for him by preparing oatmeal mixed with freshly drawn human blood. By pretending to eat her share while secreting it away in her scarf, she provides the means of reviving the young men whose blood she has drawn. Subsequent quick thinking on her part secures a rosy future for herself. The watercolor illustrations draw on the dark end of Hague's usual earth-tone palette and depict a desolate village and eerie graveyard. The dead man's ragged clothing, clawlike hands, and gaunt face match the text for spine-tingling appeal. As in the best folktales, the telling retains a consistent sense of time and place in both the text and the illustrations. A note names Jeremiah Curtin as the tale's original collector. Other less lyrical versions include "Mary Culhane and the Dead Man" in Molly Bang's The Goblins Giggle and Other Stories (Peter Smith, 1988) and Robert San Souci's "The Blood-Drawing Ghost" in Even More Short and Shivery (Delacorte, 1997). From the haunting endpapers on, this fluidly retold and memorably illustrated tale is perfect scary-story fare for middle-grade programming.
Faith Brauti- gam, Gail Borden Public Library, Elgin, IL
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