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Help a Reader Out: A Book List for Teenage Boys

Stephanie Ellis, a participant on Monster Librarian’s Facebook page, noted that right now there is a lot of great YA horror with girls as protagonists or major characters, but she’s having trouble finding any with boys as protagonists (writers, take note). I personally think it is lovely that we’re seeing more girls take on major roles in horror fiction, but in looking at this list by Kelly Jensen of YA horror fiction for the second half of 2019, 28 of the books have women as authors or editors (there is one anthology, slanted significantly toward women authors) and just three have men as authors. So many women writers getting published and lots of girls and women as protagonists or major characters is a great problem to have… unless you are looking specifically for YA horror with boys as protagonists and major characters. There are a lot of boys who are reluctant readers and an engaging YA read will grab them. Of course we shouldn’t all expect all books to be mirrors of our experiences, but there are now many more options for boys to read stories that showcase girls as protagonists and point-of-view characters, so there are more windows to look through, and doors to step through, in YA horror than ever before.  A note: I’d like to see alternatives to traditional depictions of masculinity in future YA horror. It makes for some pretty great writing when you see it!

A few things about teens who seek out horror. In a very small 2007 study, Sharon McKool discovered that there are many kids who jump straight from reading Goosebumps to reading Stephen King (this included her own son).  Based on my even earlier experience as a college student in the 1990s, I had more than one classmate who first engaged in reading when he first discovered Stephen King, and thought he was the greatest writer ever. A teenage boy was the first to hand me Anne Rice. My brother, not a reader, was gripped by In Cold Blood. YA is not a stopping point for these boys.

But many boys aren’t ready to make that jump and take the path that leads through YA fiction, and that’s awesome, because there are some great books available for them. There are even outstanding authors who first wrote for adults who have now also written YA horror, like Jonathan Maberry, Jeff Strand, and Steven Wedel (author of Murdered by Human Wolves, written for an adult audience, as well as co-author with Carrie Jones of one of the books Jensen mentioned as coming out later this year). These authors have the opportunity to introduce the adult horror genre to their young adult audiences craving more. However, since the current crop of upcoming YA horror fiction doesn’t seem to offer much in the way of boys as protagonists or major characters, here are a few older titles you can turn to. They are very different in tone, level of gore, age appropriateness, writing style, type of creature, and quality, so you can’t just hand the list over to any teenage boy and say “pick one.” But it is a starting place for making recommendations to the right kids. We’ve reviewed many, but not all, of these books. If the book was published before 2014, you’ll need to search the original MonsterLibrarian.com.com website to find it, but it should be pretty simple to find most of these reviewed elsewhere as well.

 

A Bad Day for Voodoo by Jeff Strand (2013) This Bram Stoker nominee is both funny and violent. Strand has written other books for younger readers that aren’t as violent, and comic horror for adults that can get very gory.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (2011). This outstanding book should be in every collection. It is powerful and wrenching, and gorgeously illustrated.

Anna Dressed in Blood (2 book series): Anna Dressed in Blood (2011), Girl of Nightmares (2012) by Kendare Blake. Anna Dressed in Blood is consistently recommended as a “book to read” on recommendation lists for YA horror.

Escape from Furnace (5 book series): Lockdown (2009), Solitary (2010), Death Sentence (2011), Fugitives (2012), Execution (2012)  by Alexander Gordon Smith. This action-packed dystopian series about a brutal underground prison for delinquent teenagers has some really difficult torture and body horror scenarios.

Five Nights at Freddy’s (2 book series): The Silver Eyes (2016), The Twisted Ones (2017) by Scott Cawthorn and Kira Breed-Wrisely. These are based on the popular video game Five Nights at Freddy’s. 

Gone (8 book series): Gone (2008), Hunger (2009), Lies (2010), Plague (2011), Fear (2012), Light (2013),  Monster (2017), Villain (2018) by Michael Grant

Heap House (The Iremonger Trilogy, #1) by Edward Carey (2014)

Lockwood & Co. ( 5 book series): The Screaming Staircase (2013), The Whispering Skull (2014), The Hollow Boy (2015), The Creeping Shadow (2016), The Empty Grave (2017)  by Jonathan Stroud. These will probably appeal more to younger teens and are slanted toward mystery.

Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children (6 book series): Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2011), Hollow City (2014), Library of Souls (2015), Map of Days (2018), The Conference of the Birds (upcoming)  by Ransom Riggs. The use of vintage photographs and documents really sets these apart. A movie was made of the first book in 2016.

Peeps by Scott Westerfeld (2005)

Red Eye (10 book series): Flesh and Blood, Bad Bones, Savage Island, and Whiteout all have boys as protagonists. Tony Jones has done a summary of the 10 books in this UK series here.

Rot & Ruin (4 book series) : Rot & Ruin (2010), Dust & Decay (2011), Flesh & Bone (2012), Fire & Ash (2013). by Jonathan Maberry. This Stoker Award-winning series is essential. Bits & Pieces (2015) collects shorter pieces that take place in the same fictional world, and Broken Lands (2018) is the first book in a follow-up series.

Rotters by Daniel Kraus (2011)

Skeleton Creek (5 book series):  Skeleton Creek (2009), Ghost in the Machine (2009), The Crossbones (2010), The Raven (2011), The Phantom Room (2014) by Patrick Carman. Skeleton Creek is an interactive series that directs readers to YouTube videos and websites intended to give the story a feeling of realism.

Slasher Girls & Monster Boys edited by April Genevieve Tucholke (2015). This is on HWA’s “Summer Scares” list for 2019.

The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein (2 book series): This Dark Endeavor and Such Wicked Intent by Kenneth Oppel (reprinted 2012) I fangirl these ones! Kenneth Oppel is a very talented writer.

The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group by Catherine Jinks (2019)

The Devil’s Engine (3 book series): Hellraisers (2015), Hellfighters (2016), Hellwalkers (2017)  by Alexander Gordon Smith

The Enemy (7 book series): The Enemy (2010), The Dead (2011), The Fear (2012),  The Sacrifice (2013), The Fallen (2014), The Hunted (2015), The End (2017) by Charlie Higson. This post-apocalyptic series begins after nearly all the adults have been turned into cannabilistic zombies, and the children and teens are banding together in gangs, in hopes of surviving.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (2009). This Newbery Award-winning book is outstanding and covers a boy’s life from young child to young man. The artwork by Dave McKean is startling and effective.

The Graveyard Book (graphic novel) by Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell (2018)

The Illuminae Files: Illuminae (2015), Gemina (2016), and Obsidio (2018) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. These look more intimidating than they actually are. The stories are set up as a series of chat logs, emails, video transcriptions, photos, sketches, maps, and impressive double page illustrations, so even though the books are substantial they don’t need to be intimidating. They have a futuristic science-fiction setting.

The Monstrumologist (4 book series): The Monstrumologist, The Curse of the Wendigo, The Isle of Blood, The Final Descent by Rick Yancey. Will is the 12 year old apprentice to a “monstrumologist,” both scientist and monster-slayer, writing of his experiences. Set in the Victorian era, the language can be difficult and flowery.  Although The Monstrumologist is a Printz Honor book, it is not for everyone. It will appeal most to readers with advanced vocabulary and a very strong stomach for gore and body horror.

The Thief of Always by Clive Barker (1992,  reissued 2014). Clive Barker takes a different tone in this story of a house where it’s always a holiday. Many, many horror fans and writers have mentioned this as a gateway title to adult horror.

The Thief of Always (graphic novel) by Clive Barker, adapted by Kris Obrisko, art by Gabriel Hernandez (2010)

Thirsty by M.T. Anderson (1997, reissued 2010) Published in the days when YA horror was a rare treat, nobody had heard of that Harry Potter guy, and Amelia Atwater-Rhodes was a big deal, Thirsty remains memorable to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on June 12, 2019 by , Reply

Gris Grimly’s Frankenstein

It’s so unfair that I just found out about this. Gris Grimly, illustrator of  two very creepy books of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories (Tales of Death and Dementia and Tales of Mystery and Madness (reviewed here), now has an illustrated version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, just out since August 27.  Grimly was interviewed by Publisher’s Weekly about the process of re-creating, designing, and illustrating Frankenstein, a story which has been adapted and presented in many different ways (it’s a really interesting interview, and here is a link so you can check it out for yourself). One of the things I learned from reading it was that Grimly had blogged about the process as he worked through the book, created illustrations, got frustrated, made changes, and pulled it all together. For four years. How I missed knowing that a brilliant illustrator of both children’s and YA books was working on, and blogging about, this fantastic project for FOUR YEARS is crazy! I so wish the publisher had contacted us and offered a copy to us for review. Anyway, the blog he wrote as he was creating this book is a pretty neat look into the mind of an illustrator who is serious about respecting the author’s intent while also making the story his own, and here is a link so you can visit there. I loved Kenneth Oppell’s prequel to the Frankenstein story, This Dark Endeavor (reviewed here), which (at least in the Kindle version) was paired with the original novel, and is intriguing and gripping enough to motivate some kids into attempting the original. However, from what he says, Grimly takes what appears to be a much more direct, visual, and fantastic approach to the story, one that may draw in an entirely different audience of YA readers. But mainly, right now, I’m just bummed that, with the book four years in the making, and Grimly publicly blogging about it, that I didn’t know about it until now. And if you didn’t know about it before, and you see just the bits he shows on his blog,  I suspect you’ll want to know more, too.

Posted on August 30, 2013 by , Reply

Teen Read Week: It Came From The Library! Kenneth Oppel on Frankenstein

Kenneth Oppel is the author of  two novels (so far) about the young Victor Frankenstein, This Dark Endeavor (reviewed here) and Such Wicked Intent(reviewed here). He has also written many other books, and received a Printz Honor Award for his novel Airborn in 2004. We asked him to share what influenced him to write the story of Victor Frankenstein. It was pretty neat to learn that Frankenstein is one of his favorite books! You can see what he wrote back to us below.

 

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 From Kenneth Oppel:

 

Frankenstein is one of my favourite novels, and I wish I’d written it. Unfortunately, it was written two hundred years ago by a 19-year old genius called Mary Shelley. Arguably, Frankenstein is the first science fiction novel, the first monster novel, the first horror novel. Not only is it an incredibly gripping read but, like all the best literature, it tackles weighty themes: reckless human ambition, the ethical implications of scientific pursuit, the creator’s responsibilities to his creations, and the perils of really, really bad parenting. All things that are still relevant today.

 

A couple of years ago, while re-reading the novel, I was struck by how quickly Victor Frankenstein’s youth is described – and one line in particular stuck out: “No youth could have passed more happily than mine.” Now, remember that this is a kid who goes on to dig up corpses, chop them up, sew the body parts back together, jolt them with electricity in the hopes of revivifying them, and creating life from death. Doesn’t sound like a very happy youth to me. What might have happened to Victor to lead him to become the “mad scientist” we all know? That, I thought, would make an interesting story.

 

A few pages later, Shelley goes on to give a helpful clue: “I entered with the greatest diligence into the search for… the elixir of life…. What glory would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!”

 

Right away I had an image of a teenager who was curious, ambitious, arrogant, and probably obsessive. Obsessions are a staple of literature — every great character has one. Whether it’s a desire or an aspiration, or the simple will to survive, there’s something that drives every hero — and every reader to keep turning pages.

 

Sixteen year old Victor Frankenstein is a fantastic character to work with. He’s the embryonic form of the man who will go on to dig up corpses, chop them up, suture then back together and jolt them with electricity to try to create life from death. Now that’s an obsession! When you read about people who create a work of genius, whether it’s an invention or a work of art, there’s often a strain of compulsion or even madness that motivates them and keeps them working tirelessly towards their goal — often at great emotional cost to themselves and those around them. Off the top of my head it could be as various as Howard Hughes (with his movies, or his Spruce Goose), or Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now) or Philip K Dick (who wrote himself to death).

 

Victor’s search for The Elixir of Life makes for an excellent quest. But it seemed to me there had to be something more behind it. What if Victor needed the elixir for a personal purpose? Was he himself ill? Or maybe a friend, parent – or a beloved sibling?

 

And so, in my alternative Frankenstein mythology, I decided that Victor Frankenstein had a twin brother, Konrad — who has an entirely different personality, and is a much steadier sort than Victor — and just that much better at everything.

 

It was tremendous fun to learn about the real Mary Shelley and her sources for Frankenstein. I’m sure plenty of my readers will pick up on all the references to the real Mary Shelley and the fascinating and tragedy-filled life she led. From my point of view, all this material was source material for me. I used Mary Shelley’s family as a basis for Victor’s – and stole characteristics from her husband (Percy Shelley) and friend Lord Byron to build Victor’s personality and backstory. When you’re reimagining a literary classic, you want to preserve the tone of the original, and this was one way I could do it.

 

And I loved writing Victor. As a writer I think you strive to create characters that exercsie the full range of human behaviour and emotion — and often these things are not heroic or noble or attractive. Victor is certainly a larger than life characters. He’s smart, arrogant, rash, selfish, but also loyal and loving and brave — in short, he’s no more an antihero than most of us on the planet. It’s huge fun to let loose a character with a temper, but also with a passion and a plan. I think you sympathize with Victor’s sense of inferiority around his perfect identical twin, and any reader would sympathize with someone who tries so hard to be good at things, in the shadow of another. Sometimes envy makes people do rotten things. So Victor’s not always nice, but you always want to watch him — and I think you want him to get what he wants, even if it’s a bit appalling. I mean, he’s Victor Frankenstein, not Harry Potter.

Posted on October 15, 2012 by , 1 comment
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