Superstitions

by Cheri Johnson

A broken mirror means seven years of bad luck. Spooky events are more likely to happen on Friday the 13th. A black cat is a sign of trouble to come. Knock on wood if you don't want something you've said to come back to haunt you. These are common superstitions. But where did they come from, and are any of them true? In Superstitions , part of Full Tilt's Urban Legends series, readers will explore the history of these beliefs. Presented through stories and timelines and filled with fun facts and vocabulary words, students will learn new ways to think about many ideas and phrases we take for granted.

48 pages, Library Binding

Published August 1, 2017

About the author

Raised in Lake of the Woods County in northern Minnesota, Cheri Johnson has won grants and residencies from organizations such as the McKnight Foundation, the Bush Foundation, Yaddo, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She studied writing at the University of Minnesota, Hollins University, and Augsburg University. Her chapbook of poems, Fun & Games, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2009 and she’s written two series of nonfiction books for young readers for Full Tilt Press. Crocus Hill: A Ghost Story, a literary performance project she created with the composer Julie Johnson, the filmmaker D.J. Mendel, and the new-music ensemble Zeitgeist, was supported by the Knight Foundation. She’s published fiction and other work in magazines such as Pleiades, Glimmer Train Stories, Puerto del Sol, and New South, and her novel The Girl in Duluth, which she published under the name Sigrid Brown, won a 2023 Midwest Book Award. Her novel Annika Rose won the 2022 Women’s Prose Prize from Red Hen Press and will be published in May 2024. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she critiques manuscripts as an editor at the Loft Literary Center and writes about books and the performing arts on Instagram @CheriJohnsonArt.