Dying to Meet You by Kate Klise

I've always enjoyed a good ghost story, especially one on the humorous side. Dying to Meet You written by Kate Klise and illustrated by her sister M. Sarah Klise certainly fits the bill. It is set in a rundown Victorian mansion in Ghastly, Illinois. The address is 43 Old Cemetery Road. Ignatius B. Grumply moves there to find the quiet he requires to overcome twenty years of writer's block and pen the 13th volume in his Ghost Tamer series. To his surprise, an eleven year boy, his cat, and a ghost also live in the house. As the Rolling Stones would say to Ignatius (or Iggy), "You can't always get what you want, but you get what you need."

What is particularly fun about Dying to Meet You is that it is cleverly told through notes, letters, legal documents, and newspaper articles instead of traditional prose. In the process, readers are introduced to a number of secondary characters, such as E. Gadd and Frank N. Beans. It is as much fun for adult readers as kids.

Dying to Meet You is the first in the 43 Old Cemetery Road series. In the second book Over My Dead Body, Dick Tater tries to remove the boy Seymour Hope from the mansion to send him to an orphanage. It sounds promising.

Thanks to Dana who reviewed Dying to Meet You on Thommy Ford Kids.

Klise, Kate. Dying to Meet You. Harcourt, 2009. ISBN 9780152057275.