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Moms vs. Zombies, Mother’s Day Edition: Ask Jane

Welcome to the first of our Mother’s Day posts! Today’s entry is a fictional advice column, Ask Jane. It’s so hard to make parenting decisions that moms often end up turning to the experts: speakers, authors, and advice columnists. While there are many general survival manuals out there, like Max Brooks’  The Zombie Survival Guide, and Sean Page’s The Official Zombie Handbook, reviewed here, when it comes to the zombie apocalypse, we can now turn to Ask Jane.

The author, Jane Doe, is the mother of children of varying ages, including a four year old and at least one teenager. She’s also an inveterate reader of zombie fiction, and a font of knowledge on all things zombie.  Her real identity and location are unknown, but in the event of an apocalypse, she plans to head for Palm Springs.

Ask Jane: Practical Advice for Moms

Now that the Zompocalypse is here, we moms don’t know what to do with our children. We want them to be kids, but how do we keep them safe without impacting their childhood? Here are the most common questions asked.

Should I give my child Phalanx?

Phalanx is a rabies vaccine. It does absolutely nothing against the Zed Virus. While it won’t hurt your child to have the vaccination (if he or she is bitten by a raccoon it might help),  it will be ineffective against the living dead.

I’m having a hard time breaking my 5 yr old of her sharing habit. Should I even try?

Sharing is good manners. With the limited supplies survivors have on hand, sharing well is a must. Plus, if you share with others, they’ll share with you. When you become low on ammunition, your daughter’s sharing habits will save your lives.

Timmy’s best friend was bitten and he’s been having a hard time adjusting. How can I help him?

This is a tough one. You want your child to have friends, but it’s not good to get too attached to people. Help Timmy deal with the loss of his friend by putting the friend down humanely. Let Timmy do it if it will help. One clean shot to the head will let Timmy know his friend is no longer suffering.

My son is only 4. Is it too early to give him his own rifle?

4 is the perfect age to start lessons in marksmanship. Find him a little .22 rifle and let him practice on the hordes outside the city limits. The sooner he learns to shoot, the safer you’ll feel.

My little Susie was bitten. She’s really sick. What should I do?

The kindest, most caring thing you can do for her is to put her down. One bullet through the head is the greatest show of love. You must think of your other children. Their safety should be considered as well.

Check back tomorrow for our next entry!

Posted on May 6, 2011 by , Reply

Teacher Appreciation

This week is Teacher Appreciation Week. Let me tell you about a teacher whose students and former students really admire and appreciate, Judy Buranich.

Judy Buranich is a high school English teacher who is also a published writer of erotic romance. She writes under a pen name, Judy Mays. Some parents were unhappy to discover her second job. They went to the media who exposed her career as a “racy novelist” and suggested that it was inappropriate for a teacher to write the “racy” stuff.

Happily, Judy Buranich has gotten the kind of support every teacher could wish for. Current and former students have come out swinging on her behalf. Her school is behind her. Most people are supportive. As a writer, she’s got the power of the romance community behind her.

I think people have funny ideas about what writers are like. My mom is always shocked when I tell her what some of the authors we’ve interviewed do for a living. Some of them are high school teachers, too. Writing horror doesn’t make them bad teachers any more than writing erotica makes Judy Buranich a bad teacher. Actually, being an excellent full time high school teacher AND a published author is pretty impressive! Here is a link to a video that one of Judy’s former students made to support her. It is pretty awesome to see her former student so passionate about her rights. It makes me wish I’d gone to high school in Middleburg, Pennsylvania.

If there’s a teacher you appreciate, this week is a good time to tell them.

Posted on May 6, 2011 by , Reply

Vampires: The New All American Hero?

I was excited to see that the American Library Association had published a new readers advisory guide, Fang-tastic Fiction, with the subtitle “Twenty-First Century Paranormal Fiction”. It’s not often that a professional readers advisory guide appears that supports the librarians and readers who use our site (kind of- the author, Patricia O’Brien-Matthews, attempts immediately to remove the horror genre from her definition of paranormal fiction- but that’s not as easy as it sounds).

I’ll try to do a complete review of the book soon, but something she said in her introduction really jarred me. She wrote that vampires have “all the traits of the all-American hero”. What?

To put it in context, she’s writing about the transition of vampires from monsters to sympathetic leading characters. She attributes the change to the Twilight books and Anita Blake series, but I think that’s a stretch. Would you really pair Edward or Jean-Claude with Mom and apple pie? Deborah Wilson Overstreet was writing about this evolution before Twilight was even published, in her book Not Your Mother’s Vampire (Twilight came out in the fall of 2005, and Overstreet’s book was published shortly afterwards, in 2006, so it doesn’t mention Twilight), and she described the new, more sympathetic vampire as the “postmodern vampire”, which I think is a more accurate description. The postmodern vampire owes a lot to the media and literary franchise created by Joss Whedon, called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He (usually he) is more angsty, more likely to land a human soulmate, and may be a little more public- heck, he may be working towards redemption- but he isn’t any less a monster. A sympathetic character, perhaps, but what makes them sexy is the danger. Not the sparkles.

Of course, there are differences between the scholarly book Overstreet produced in the pre-Twilight days and O’Brien-Matthews’ guide to readers’ advisory for practicing librarians looking for immediate references. O’Brien-Matthews isn’t doing critical literary analysis- that would be WAY outside the scope of her book, which still has to cover an extremely broad field of literature for some very busy people. But all-American hero? Isn’t it enough to be a sympathetic protagonist in the world of the book?

Posted on May 5, 2011 by , Reply
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