76 pages • 2 hours read
Tim TingleHow I Became a Ghost: A Choctaw Trail of Tears Story
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Introduction
How I Became a Ghost
- Genre: Fiction; middle grade historical fiction with supernatural elements
- Originally Published: 2013
- Reading Level/Interest: Lexile HL480L; grades 4-7
- Structure/Length: 29 chapters; approx. 141 pages
- Protagonist and Central Conflict: Ten-year-old Isaac, now a ghost, tells the story of the Choctaw people’s removal from their land in Mississippi in 1830. After US soldiers burn their homes, Isaac and his family flee with other Choctaws into a nearby swamp, only to be followed by white soldiers offering smallpox-ridden blankets.
- Potential Sensitivity Issues: Violence against Native people; deaths of young characters
Tim Tingle, Author
- Bio: Member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma; grew up near Houston, Texas; great-great-grandson of John Carnes, who walked the Trail of Tears in 1835; earned his bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Texas and his master’s degree in Native American Studies from the University of Oklahoma; based his book How I Became a Ghost on interviews with tribal elders gathered while retracing the route of the Trail of Tears; travels widely as a storyteller at festivals and schools
- Other Works: Crossing Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship and Freedom (2006); Danny Blackgoat, Navajo Prisoner (Book 1 of 3; 2013); House of Purple Cedar (2014); When a Ghost Talks, Listen (2017)
- Awards: Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books (2013); American Indian Youth Literature Award, Best Middle Grade Book (2014)
