Being Dead [Hardcover]

Vivian Vande Velde (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2001

What happens when a sixteen-year-old girl falls in love with a two hundred-year-old ghost? Or when a newly dead boy gets robbed by his unscrupulous boss? Or when a heartless man finally agrees to dance with his wife . . . after she’s passed away?
Vivian Vande Velde explores the world of the dead--and the undead--in this surprisingly moving collection of unnerving tales.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Gr 7 Up-Horror fans will love these seven deliciously creepy tales featuring ghosts, cemeteries, suicides, murders, and other death-related themes. Most of the selections deal with everyday teens in seemingly ordinary situations; readers will settle in, confident that they know what to expect, only to receive a spine-tingling jolt as they hit one of the collection's many gruesome twists and turns. The first story, "Drop by Drop," shows the author's macabre imagination at its best. Sixteen-year-old Brenda is understandably disgruntled when her parents whisk her away from her friends and her life in the city. Worse, their new house in a small town appears to be haunted. In one shivery scene, a disembodied hand touches her through her waterbed mattress, and Brenda spends the night on the couch. Clues turn up: a missing little girl, a foul smell from the woods, a dripping ghost. But just when it seems that Brenda will solve the mystery, the truth comes out-and most readers will be reeling with shock. In another story, a boy killed in Vietnam returns to haunt the father who forced him to enlist-or does he? In "October Chill," a terminally ill girl falls for the ghost of a teen from Colonial times. None of the stories are gory, but they are all quite dark. Recommend this title to teens who don't want happy-ever-after endings.

Miranda Doyle, San Francisco Public Library

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gr. 7-10. Seven stories, ranging in length from just a few pages to more than 60, comprise this collection, with a ghost in every one. In "Drop by Drop," sullen teen Brenda loathes the rural house her parents have moved to from Buffalo, but her sulking turns to fear when a wet and bloody child that no one else can see keeps turning up in the new house at the sound of a bicycle bell. Emily has a brain tumor that she knows will kill her, but she finds a queasy tenderness in eighteenth-century ghosts at the historical site where she works in "October Chill." Vietnam casts a ghost in "Shadow Brother" and a young newsie in October 1930 doesn't lose his insouciance even when he's dead. Vande Velde has a sure hand, and these spirits are destined to find their audience. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 203 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books; 1st edition (September 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0152163204
• ISBN-13: 978-0152163204
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,792,675 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read it in one sitting...IF you dare!, December 1, 2001

By 

Jesse Penitent "zekaille" (Somewhere, Out There) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Being Dead (Hardcover)

Vivian Vande Velde writes with such a sure grasp of teen dialogue, teen humor and teen life one is convinced that she must be a perpetual teenager herself.

The seven stories in this volume are by turns spine-chilling, rib-tickling and heart tugging. Some of them all at once.

Each story gives us a protagonist with a haunting problem, a sense of grim humor and (with the exception of the sweet but predictable "October Chill") a surprising resolution.

Included here is a tale of near perfection...thrills, chills, mystery and even a little comedy..."Drop by Drop" will make you laugh even while it's scaring you out of a year's growth. The protagonist, Brenda, struggles to make friends in a new town--and to wonder WHY she, of her entire family, is haunted by the spirit of an angry little girl. Brenda is so funny about her misery, and so typical of the parentally put-upon teenager that we can't help but be sympathetic to her problem. But as the story (it's a long one--64 pages that fly by) unfolds, clues and ominous hints to the nature of the vicious little ghost are also revealed...and they spell disaster for Brenda. In fact, this story is not terrifying because of the ghost but because of the disaster her revelation will mean for Brenda and her family. I
sat in breathless wonder when I finished this tale. It is the best of a wonderful lot and should be read to all teens of a certain age....

Of the other tales, "Dancing With Marjorie's Ghost" is a great
tale for campfire tellings...the final lines will chill you, "For Love of Him" offers a darker view of romance beyond the grave and "Shadow Brother" will disturb anyone who has an older brother and a father who just don't get along. "The Ghost" is
a short, funny piece that certainly owes much to a certain popular film of a few seasons ago. The title story features one of the wildest ways to die and humorously examines the lengths one will go to to provide for one's family.

In all, a delightfully chilly bit of mist and mirrors, perfect for the young reader who loves ghost stories and wants something fresh, thoughtful and funny.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining Way to Pass an Evening, March 24, 2010

By 

Ann-Kat @ todayiread.com (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Being Dead (Paperback)

THREE QUICK POINTS
*Point 1: The cover is creepier than the stories.

*Point 2: The book is a mixed bag. Some stories are little more than incomplete thoughts while others are quite moving.

*Point 3: The prose is smooth and it makes for easy reading.

STORY BREAKDOWN
Being Dead is a collection of seven short stories: Drop by Drop, about a teenager and her family moving to a new home; Dancing with Marjorie's Ghost, about a man being visited by his late wife; Shadow Brother, about a father's spiral into madness; Ghost Story, about collegians moving into a haunted house; For Love of Him, about a young boy entranced by gravestones; October Chill, a romance between a terminally ill girl and a colonial soldier; and Being Dead, about the experience of a young depression era boy and his family.

MY THOUGHTS
This book was a mixed bag of stories. A couple of them amounted to no more than incomplete thoughts with unrealized potential. Shadow Brother and For Love of Him fall into this category. A few were simply mediocre, or rehashed versions of older ghost stories. Drop by Drop, Dancing with Marjorie's Ghost, and Ghost Story fall into this category. I will say, however, that these three stories were entertaining and what relegated Drop by Drop to this group was its ending, which was trite. But a couple were truly works of art. October Chill and Being Dead, the two final stories in the book, fall into this category. In fact, these two stories alone bumped this review from three stars to four. Both of them left me with a desire to read more, but I didn't feel as though I didn't know enough and both managed to tug at my heartstrings. With Being Dead, my favorite of the bunch, I felt myself gasping at times and laughing at others; there's also a fun twist. (I won't mention it because it would spoil the story.)

Overall, this is a great book to pass some time with. There's nothing overtly frightening about it, but a few stories may give you a goose bump or two, especially younger readers. The gore and explicit situations are also kept to a minimum so I wouldn't have a problem recommending it to younger readers.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wide Spectrum of Ghost Stories, September 1, 2009

By 

T. Adlam "professional consumer" (South Florida, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Being Dead (Paperback)

(3.5 Stars)

Being Dead is a collection of seven ghost stories which range from creepy to funny to poignant, but I should also warn you that you won't find too much to keep you awake with fright between its covers. (It doesn't mean it's a bad book, though.)

Drop by Drop tells the tale of a teenage girl, moving to a rural area with her family, who becomes haunted by a young girl. There was one section in the story which made me gasp because, despite knowing I should have, I didn't see it coming. The first three-quarters of the story was a great lead-in for the climax, but that's where it died. The ending was predictable if not the twist; there's an important lesson in there that I daresay seems disjointed.

Dancing With Marjorie's Ghost is a cautionary tale that reads like something familiar (woman comes back from grave at the request of her "grieving" husband). It's main tenet is to be careful what you wish for (and watch out for karma). Despite its seeming familiarity, it was a simple, quick, and fun read.

Shadow Brother is the story of a family torn apart when the eldest son, Kevin, is drafted for the Vietnam war and dies in battle. Stricken with grief and guilt, his father spirals downhill. A ghost is alluded to, but at the end, it's still a question. Unfortunately, this story fell apart for me partly because of the characterization--they didn't seem entirely believable, especially the relationship between Sarah, Kevin's younger sister and the story's narrator, and her cousin Dwight--and because it seemed more like a patchwork story than a well-flowing one.

Ghost Story is rather straightforward: Collegians start moving into a haunted house, then quickly move out. That's the entire story and it was a super-quick read to boot, but it had me chuckling by the end.

For Love of Him had plenty of unrealized potential. It's about a young man who becomes captivated by the historical gravestones of a man and woman who wouldn't have been much older than him when they died. His obsession soon takes a near deadly turn until the intervention of a mysterious almost-stranger. I wanted to love it--the atmosphere and backstory left plenty of room for growth, but it was vague in all the wrong places and it resulted in a highly predictable ending.

October Chill looks through the eyes of a young girl dying from a brain tumor who meets the ghost of a colonial soldier while working in a recreated colonial village and falls in love. By the end of the story I was wishing it were a full-length novel because I was intrigued by the young man's story and wanted to see more development between them; it all happened and ended too quickly although the story was certainly enjoyable. More heart-tugging than scary with a bittersweet ending.

Being Dead, the book's namesake, transpires during the great depression. A paperboy who meets with a fine piece of luck moments before his untimely death must find a way to deliver an important message to his mother and sister. The voice of the story is vastly different from the previous stories and may throw the reader off-kilter for a moment, but one can quickly acclimate. The story is smooth, poignant, and hilarious--I won't mention *how* the paperboy dies, but I will say I should have, but didn't, see it coming. The events following his death were enough to build the frustration and by the end of the story, when the final message is delivered, I was misty-eyed. By far the most well-balanced and well-written story in the bunch.

Despite not loving two of the stories and finding another two somewhat inchoate, the remaining stories (Ghost Story, October Chill, and Being Dead) certainly made the book a worthwhile read.