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Book Review: The Grave Digger by Rebecca Bischoff

The Grave Digger  by Rebecca Bischoff

Amberjack Publishing, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1948705523

Available: Pre-order, hardcover and Kindle edition

 

It’s 1875 in Circleville, Ohio. Captain Cooper’s mother is ill,  and the doctor has to be paid. Although Cap is not yet thirteen, his father has decided it’s time for him to join him and his partner Lum as a “resurrectionist”, a person who digs up dead bodies in order to sell them to medical schools for dissection. The plan is to dig up the bodies of those who won’t be missed (mostly “colored” people), but the dead don’t appear to be staying dead. Cap’s classmate Jessamyn comes back to life after he touches her, and the next body wakes up while they are actually digging. The secret activities of the grave diggers are out, and they have to cover them up and find other ways to acquire the bodies. Cap is spooked, but his mother’s medical bills still have to be paid, and his father insists this is the only way they can raise the money. Beyond acquiring the bodies, Cap realizes that there is a larger conspiracy at work, involving not just unsavory characters, but also some of the most respected individuals in town. While the newspaper stirs up the town, it is mainly the “colored” people who are affected, and their demands for a cemetery guard are left unanswered. We can all be grateful that this is a middle-grade novel and that, while a book about grave robbing, burying people alive, and human dissection will obviously have some disturbing moments, it doesn’t get gratuitously gruesome.

Racism in Circleville’s general population doesn’t rear its head in overtly violent ways, but in white people’s daily choices and conversations, like the Coopers’ housekeeper’s resentment of and unwillingness to interact with Jardine, an African-American woman who is a friend and hear of Cap’s mother, comments about “those people”, and the choice to zero in on body-snatching the African-Americans in the cemetery.  It intersects with sexism as well, with Jessamyn’s mother feeling that the only choice she has to support her child is sex work (it’s referred to indirectly), and Jardine’s daughter Delphia, after telling Cap of her ambition to be a doctor, bracing herself for the expected comment “but you’re a colored girl!” and laughing when he says “but you’re a girl!” instead (either way, in 1875, ten years after the Civil War ended, she’d be unlikely to get into medical school, but the book treats it like it’s a real possibility– props to Bischoff for that).  It is noticeable (and relevant to the present day) that there are so few consequences for anyone who participated in the grave-robbing scheme and lived to tell about it.  That’s probably realistic, and in a middle-grade novel you want things to turn out for the protagonist, but I think this ending requires a conversation. There is a myth in the Midwest that because the Underground Railroad had a strong presence that there must not have been other race-baced issues (I can’t tell you about Ohio specifically, but it’s definitely the case in Indiana), and this book exposes that.

There are a lot of schools that can’t officially celebrate Halloween (my district doesn’t allow it) but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to celebrate the season. The Grave Digger is a great historical fiction choice with a macabre touch to promote to the right elementary and middle-schoolers at this time of year.  Highly recommended.

Posted on October 4, 2019 by , Reply

Musings: Thoughts on Why There Aren’t More Male Protagonists in YA Horror

Over at Ginger Nuts of Horror, school librarian and YA dark fiction reviewer Tony Jones gave his thoughts on why there aren’t more strong male protagonists in current young adult dark fiction.  You should read his article first, because these are my thoughts after reading it. Tony knows a lot more than I do about YA horror, but Monster Librarian has been around since 2005 and I’ve read and written about a fair amount of YA and middle grade horror in that time period. Here’s a list of titles I put together in June, and as you can see, most of them are not very recent.

Tony suggests that the paranormal romance trend kicked off by Twilight at about that time turned a lot of boys off from reading horror, and I’m sure that was true,  at the time. In 2019, though, some teenagers might not even be aware of Twilight (quote from my daughter: “I’m not sure what it’s about. Doesn’t it have a black cover with a disembodied hand holding an apple?”). Amelia Atwater-Rhodes was a big name before Stephenie Meyer came along, and what kid knows her books now?  There were a couple of other trends that hit in the 2000s as well, the biggest one being Harry Potter. I will say that in 1999 I never would have guessed it would take of like it did, but Harry Potter has had an enduring effect on fantasy literature, complete with fearsome and bizarre creatures and terrifying sorcerers. That kind of fantasy quest fiction with a dark edge overwhemed a lot of the series horror popular in the 1990s with fantasy quest knockoffs. Tony brought up The Hunger Games as an influence, and we did start seeing a lot of dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction around that time, with zombies becoming popular as well. There was more focus on relationships, and sometimes romance, but there were probably at least an equal number of zombie and dystopian titles with girls and boys as protagonists.

So what’s happening now that is different? Well, we’ve kind of moved through that fear of a far future apocalypse because it seems imminent, and the problems and fears kids are facing today have once again changed. And one of the ways they have changed is that the fears of girls, women, and other marginalized groups are taking up space that they didn’t before. and privilege has complicated the dynamic.  A lot of the books we see coming out have to do with agency being stolen, reproductive rights being limited, and things that are spinning out of control for people who already didn’t have much. With women writing most of YA horror, I’m guessing that’s where much of the horror lies.  Privilege is more complicated than just that, though, as evidenced by the clueless half-white, half Puerto Rican female protagonist from Vermont in her interactions with Puerto Rican residents in Five Midnights by Ann Cardinal Davila or wealthy Hanna and undocumented Nick in Gemina by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. It is possible to write characters of teenage boys with nuance, and as the mother of a teenage boy, I am desperate to see it.  The #OwnVoices movement, focused on finding and publishing diverse stories by diverse authors, especially in children’s and young adult literature, has also picked up some steam. Pitch Dark by Courtney Alameda is a great example of that, with both male and female point of view characters.

I agree with Tony that there are a lot of kids who skip straight from Goosebumps to Stephen King: in fact, research by Jo Worthy from more than 20 years back documents conversations between middle schoolers who do. In fact, teen readers are even likely to read and recommend adult fiction to their peers, if the “YA Council Recommends” shelves at my public library are any indication. At the same time, there are plenty of kids who don’t want to make that jump all at once. The Last Kids on Earth, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Captain Underpants  remain popular at the middle school level, and graphic novels of any kind are constantly checking out.  Rick Riordan’s quest narratives also stay popular, because they allow kids to gradually level up, with the first Percy Jackson series appropriate for elementary kids and the most recent series, Trials of Apollo, of interest even to adults. Riordan isn’t writing horror, although there are certainly horrific and gruesome elements in his work, as well as comedy and in-jokes. Even when Riordan has a male point of view character, though, we get to see the uncertainties and growth that take place in his protagonists– they aren’t stock characters. Kids devour those books– I have been hearing about the release of the newest one for what feels like eons now.

Back to those kids who skip over YA and go straight to the adult stuff: while lots of us may remember reading adult horror at a relatively young age, it probably wasn’t checked out from the school library. It’s not a recent thing that middle school libraries aren’t stocking Stephen King. If you headed over to the high school in my community, it looks like they have his complete collection, but while an informal poll I did awhile back showed that Gen Xers and millenials as young as 8 had read IT, that doesn’t mean they were getting it at their school library, or even that they’d want to, and definitely they are not finding in in the middle school collections here. Some books are “underground reading”, the kind that you want to pass around with your friends without actually telling the adults in your life about, and Stephen King, before he gained respectability, used to be one of those authors. Roland Smith writes “creature thriller” type books, such as the Cryptid Hunters series and others of his books, but there’s not much in YA horror that I can find for those who love the “man vs. nature” conflict. There doesn’t seem to be a Guy N. Smith for the YA crowd (if there is, I want to know). Those readers do really have to move on to the kinds of titles that used to be found in the horror sections of used bookstores.

 

Reading choices made by my 13 year old son: Anthony Horowitz (chosen but not read) Shadow Girl (read only at home) Chronicles of Elementia (his favorite book ever, at least on Monday) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Tony also discusses the gendering of book covers. It really is true that people judge books by their covers. Tony suggests that girls are more likely to pick up a book with a cover that is designed to appeal to boys than the other way around. That may be true in some cases, but I don’t think that is necessarily the case. Kids look for clues from book covers. I’ve got The Word Is Murder by Anthony Horowitz sitting next to my sofa. It has a black cover with a shiny knife and a pencil on the front. The cover is what got my son to bring it home (not read it, but bring it home), and my daughter instantly backed away.  I also have a copy of Shadow Girl by Kate Ristau, which has an orange cover with a black silhouette of a girl on it. He read this one secretly (he even tried to hide it from me) but wouldn’t take it out of the house.  I feel like a lot of this is a cultural issue– that boys might be more likely to pick up books with girls on the cover if they didn’t think other kids would embarrass them for doing so.  It’s sad that boys and girls are shamed for things like the art on the book they’re reading.

There are many fewer male protagonists in YA horror, for sure. It would be great to see this disparity addressed, but as publishers work on increasing diversity I think this is something that is going to require thoughtful discussion in the YA literature community, as there is a feeling right now that publishing has been centering male protagonists and male authors for long enough. Rudine Sims Bishop writes that books should be both windows and mirrors, which is a great analogy, but Uma Krishnaswami takes it a step further and suggests that they can be prisms: not just showing an unfamiliar world or reflecting your own back exactly, but looking at things from a different perspective. I see this as the way that YA is going to have to move in order for boys to find themselves once again as heroes in horror fiction.

 

 

 

Posted on September 25, 2019 by , Reply

Musings: In The Uncanny Valley: Oddity by Sarah Cannon and Small Spaces by Katherine Arden

The “uncanny valley” describes the effect of the almost-but-not-quite-human-seeming creature or object on certain people. It was first used to describe humans’ reactions to different kinds of robots, but it also suggests why clowns, masks, dolls, puppets, and even scarecrows show up so often in horror film and fiction. Two very different middle grade books that have come my way this summer take advantage of the uneasiness and ever fear caused by the inhabitants of the uncanny valley.

 

Oddity by Sarah Cannon

Feiwel & Friends, 2017

ISBN-13: 978-1250123282

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

 

In Oddity, Sarah Cannon describes a town of the same name in New Mexico,  where the bizarre and out-of-place have become commonplace. School safety drills include attack leopards, pizza explodes, and there are infestations of little aliens and zombie rabbits. Ada and her friend Raymond, have taken the new kid from Chicago, Cayden, under their wing.  They are Nopesers, participants in a secret wiki that shares information about Oddity’s dangers… except that instead of using it to avoid them, Ada uses them to plan expeditions, with a reluctant Raymond and nervous Cayden, to learn Oddity’s secrets.

Oddity is run by the Protection Committee, a literal puppet junta that consists of life-size, living puppets.  150 years ago, they battled the invisible Blurmonster,  and now the puppets protect the town to keep it from entering the city limits. A few people, like Cayden and his family, move in, but nobody leaves. Every year the puppets hold a sweepstakes, which all adults have to participate in, and the chosen winners disappear. Last year Ada’s twin sister Pearl was the first child to win a Sweepstakes, and Ada and her family haven’t seen her since. Only Cayden, who hasn’t grown up surrounded by menacing living puppets as town heroes and protectors, can sense something is off.

Oddity veers between absurdity, adventure, mystery, and terror. On one level, it’s a tale of family, friendship, acceptance, and the ways we deal with grief; on another, it sends a strong message about complicity and alternate world views; and on a third, it’s incredibly creepy. It’s also completely silly and off-the-wall– it’s incredible how much Cannon stuffs between the covers without shortchanging anything!  The puppets, with their awkward movements, sneering expressions, and silent puppeteers are situated right there in the uncanny valley, leaving many readers unsettled and uneasy even before they know things are more than just odd in Oddity, they are sinister, too. Recommended for ages 10+

 

Small Spaces by Katherine Arden

G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-0525515029

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

Small Spaces by Katherine Arden takes a deep dive into the uncanny valley from a different direction. Like Ada, Ollie is dealing with intense grief, in this case after the death of her mother, but instead of having a large family for support, Olivia just has her dad, who is a great dad, but has his own grieving to do. Instead of sustaining friendships, Olivia has become withdrawn, and just wants to spend her time alone. When she goes to her favorite hideout, a nearby swimming hole, she encounters a terrified woman about to throw a book in the water, and, appalled, grabs it away. The woman warns her that since she’s taken the book, she should remember to “keep to small spaces, or see what happens to you”.  Luckily, Olivia is an avid and curious reader, and immediately starts reading what appears to be a diary by one Cathy Webster titled Small Spaces, written 125 years ago for the author’s daughter, as a warning to stay away from her family home in order to avoid being caught in a deal her father made with the “smiling man”.  Intrigued, Ollie takes the book with her on a school field trip to a nearby farm. On the way, she learns that the farm her class will be visiting is the one described in the book she’s reading, that the story really happened, and that since then a schoolhouse on the farm property has burned to the ground, with no evidence of survivors.

When she arrives at the farm, Ollie discovers it is covered in scarecrows on stakes, with garden tools for hands, and that it is owned by the woman she met at the swimming hole. On the way home, the school bus breaks down and the bus driver mutters to the students that “they’ll come for the rest of you at nightfall”. Olivia is able to get the bus driver to tell her that they’ll all be taken by the servants of the “smiling man” to complete his bargain unless they leave the bus, run into the woods, and hide. The smiling man’s servants can only move at night, so during the daytime, she can travel safely. Looking out the window as the sky darkens, it seems to her that there are more scarecrows than there were, and that they are getting nearer.

Ollie decides to leave the bus, and when she tells the other students, only two others choose to go with her, running into the forest and looking for a small space to hide as they see the scarecrows descend on the school bus. Lost in the woods and cornfields in freezing October weather, running from scarecrows and ghosts, Ollie and her classmates Brian and Coco have to find their classmates and break the smiling man’s hold over them before they’re caught themselves. The next day, as the three try to figure out what to do, Coco and Brian conclude that the scarecrows are like robots or puppets, and the smiling man must be the puppet master. Malevolent scarecrows, especially in a bleak October cornfield, are actually more uncanny, in my opinion, than puppets are. The mental image of a crowd of scarecrows spearing the ground with their stakes, with garden forks for hands, grabbing at sixth graders crowded into a small space, or corralling an entire class silently across the forest, is creepy and dread-inducing.

Ollie, Brian, and Coco are not friends when the story begins. Coco is a clumsy city kid with pink hair who is ignored and bullied, Brian is a popular hockey player, and Olivia has no interest in learning more about them. Her only connection with them is that she threw a rock at Brian for picking on Coco the previous day.  For Ollie, both turn out to have unexpected depths: Brian isn’t a dumb jock– he’s an avid reader (namechecking Narnia and Alice in Wonderland) with a strong imagination who feels real anguish over what has happened to his friends. Coco is a klutz on the ground, but graceful and fearless as a climber, and fascinated by chess. I really liked the depiction of these two characters, especially Brian’s, as it’s rare to see a “popular jock” character with any more dimensionality to it, especially a boy. Ollie’s father was also an enjoyable change from father stereotypes that often appear in fiction, and even though Ollie’s mother is no longer alive during the time the book takes place, she is a vivid presence in the book. It’s easy to see how deeply Ollie feels her grief and the effect it has had on her: her confrontation with the smiling man and the choice she has to make at the end of the book, while somewhat predictable, is wrenching. Recommended for ages 10+

Both Small Spaces and Oddity have well-developed settings that are almost characters themselves, stories from the past that have strongly influenced the present, and uncanny creatures that create a sense of unease, dread, or even fear. Ghost stories are popular with middle-grade and middle school readers, and while they are enjoyable, these two books are a refreshing change.

 

Posted on August 27, 2019 by , Reply
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