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Neil Gaiman wants you to spread the word- Libraries are awesome!

Maybe you’ve heard of Neil Gaiman. He’s the author of graphic novels, fantastic novels, amazing short stories, and children’s books that are frightening, funny, and sometimes enchanting. He’s also won numerous awards, including the Newbery Award for outstanding children’s fiction, for his novel The Graveyard Book. If you haven’t read anything by him, I highly recommend that you do. 

I am so pleased that he is participating in the “Our Authors, Our Advocates” initiative of the American Library Association, and as part of that, he’s filmed this PSA. I’d love it if you’d share this with other readers and library supporters- now is a difficult time for libraries, and the more people who stand up for them the better.

I had the privilege of hearing him speak last year, and he talked a lot about the library he grew up in. So many writers really do grow up surrounded by books, not because they had them at home, but because of their library. 

And the right librarian can be so important in your life. I personally was incredibly lucky in that my elementary school librarian was there to meet me in the high school library when I finally made it through the doors, and the children’s librarian at my public library(there were no YA librarians) drew together a bunch of middle schoolers to read William Sleator and teach us the power of story. But we’re not supposed to be talking about me, although I share something with Mr. Gaiman here.

We both are passionate about keeping libraries alive and growing. And we want you you to pass it on.

Posted on April 21, 2011 by , Reply

Prom Can Be Hell

As we “spring into terror” it’s time to recognize a truly special time of year- prom season.  As anyone who survived high school can testify, it’s a dangerous (and angsty) time of year. Even if you don’t read horror, you probably know of  Carrie, Stephen King’s terrifying novel, made into a movie starring Sissy Spacek.  I read it in high school, during study hall, and just as the bell rang in the book, the bell for class dismissal rang in my classroom. I jumped right out of my chair. It’s hardly King’s scariest book, but the cruelty other girls show towards Carrie is unforgettable to me.

If it were only one book, maybe I wouldn’t have seen a trend. But it’s not just one book. It’s hard to write about high school at all without some kind of  (to paraphrase Lewis Carroll)”will he, won’t he, will he, won’t he, will he join the dance”? I don’t read a lot of adult horror (and, in spite of the number of teens who read Stephen King, he wasn’t targeting that audience with Carrie) but there sure are a lot of YA titles that center on the prom, or some other important high school dance. I can’t say I’ve read them all, and we definitely don’t have reviews up for all of them (I have linked to the reviews for the ones we have) but especially lately there have been enough of them for me to provide you with a list of related books here, if you’d like to go beyond the classic King title.

Some recent ones include:

ghostgirl by Tonya Hurley (centers on a Halloween dance)

Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins

Love is Hell by Scott Westerfeld, Melissa Marr, Justine Larbalestier, and Gabrielle Zevin

Never Slow Dance With A Zombie by E. Van Lowe (features a “winter formal”)

Once Dead, Twice Shy by Kim Harrison

Prom Dates from Hell by Rosemary Clement-Moore

Prom Nights from Hell by Stephenie Meyer, Kim Harrison, Meg Cabot, and Lauren Myracle

Suzi Clue: The Prom Queen Curse by Michelle Kehm

Zombie Queen of Newbery High by Amanda Ashby

Zombies vs. Unicorns edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier.  “Prom Night”, by Libba Bray, is a strong finish to this fantastic anthology.

And here are some oldies, including a couple by tween horrormeister R.L. Stine.

Prom Dress by Lael Littke

Prom Date by Diane Hoh

Fear Street: The Prom Queen by R.L. Stine

Fear Street Seniors: Prom Date  by R.L. Stine

If you know of any other great scary stories that take place at a school dance, leave a comment so we can add to the list!

Parents, because prom can (obviously) have all kinds of hazards (beyond the ghosts and zombies attracted to the teen dance scene), you might want to look into some prom safety tips. And, for all you prom-goers, please don’t drink or text while driving or get in a car with someone who is, keep your cell phone charged, and stay sharp. Call your parents or 911 if things get bad. I mean, I hope you do that anyway, but please take extra care.

Posted on April 21, 2011 by , Reply

Shoot the stereotypes!

Genre fiction is full of stock characters. They’re so common that it’s actually an event to encounter a character who doesn’t fall into some kind of recognizable category. It can be comfortable to slide into a world of familiar tropes and character types, and genre readers often have expectations about what they’ll find in their particular brand of fiction.

But it is a pleasure when I meet someone in a book that is more than their stereotype. And today I met Clare Fergusson. Clare is an Episcopal priest who used to be a helicopter pilot in the Army.  Not too many of those around, at least to my knowledge! She’s a Southerner whose parish is in a small town in upstate New York- an obvious outsider. There’s a lot going on under the surface in her community, and I saw many stereotypes get turned on their heads, or at least shaken sideways.

Clare is  one of the two main characters in a mystery/suspense series by Julia Spencer-Fleming, and the book I met her in is the first in the series, In the Bleak Midwinter(her newest book, One Was A Soldier, has just been released). Spencer-Fleming could have played it safe and written a “cozy”, with a sleuthing priest- there are lots of mystery-solving nuns, rabbis, and priests. Instead she created a complicated person, and because of that I was kept guessing about how she, and other characters, would act, until the very end. And I loved it.

It’s so rare to find characters who are so filled with contradictory parts, characters who can drive the story without slowing it down, and it’s such a pleasure. I sat in a waiting room for five hours this afternoon, and I am glad to have had the company.

So, how about you? Have you met any good characters lately?

Posted on April 6, 2011 by , Reply
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