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Book Review: The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, Second Edition by Becky Siegel Spratford

Since Monster Librarian has been around for quite some time, we actually reviewed reader’s advisory reference books in horror before there were many reader’s advisory books on the horror genre and even before social media became all-consuming. Most of these are on a page on our original website titled “Librarian Resources”. It’s pretty sparse, because anything published after 2014 will be found on this blog instead of the original site, and there really wasn’t much in existence then. What was once a fairly restricted community of readers and writers has grown like crazy, and the past few years have really boomed in terms of providing all kinds of helpful resources.

So it was a very big deal when Becky Siegel Spratford wrote a second edition to The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, which was published in 2012. This month I saw her announce that the third edition will be coming out next year (wow!) so I’m republishing our review of the second edition now. She has kept it updated through her blog  RA for All: Horror.  If you visit now, Becky is counting down the days until the announcement of the titles for the HWA’s summer reading program, Summer Scares, for 2020.

With the horror genre having expanded its reach and audience considerably I will be curious to see the changes in the third edition!

 

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The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, Second Edition by Becky Siegel Spratford

American Library Association, 2012

ISBN-13: 978-0838911129

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, Second Edition, is the updated version of The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, part of the American Library Association’s Reader’s Advisory series on genre fiction,. That is, the major professional organization for librarians endorses this as the authoritative text on reader’s advisory in the horror genre. The author, Becky Siegel Spratford, is a reader’s advisory librarian with a particular interest in the horror genre, and in promoting horror in the library– and is someone I admire very much. Updates for this edition can be found at her blog, RA for All: Horror. 

        The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, Second Edition is an important book for a couple of reasons. First, because it’s published by the American Library Association, it is likely to reach a wide audience of librarians, and because it’s part of an established series on readers’ advisory, it has credibility as a resource for librarians who may not know much about(or like) the horror genre that other resources may not have. That opens a door for connecting a lot of people to books they may like. Spratford does a nice job of providing a concise history of horror, introducing some prominent authors, and addressing the classics. Spratford also mentions that many horror readers prefer to read only within one subgenre (such as werewolf books), and has set up the book to provide annotated lists for recommended titles in popular subgenres,. She also includes a chapter on horror resources and marketing, which does a very nice job of offering tools and strategies for growing and promoting library horror collections, not just during October but throughout the year. This is a topic that really needed (and needs) to be addressed– horror readers don’t just read horror as Halloween rolls around, and if your horror novels are shelved with the rest of the fiction they may not even know what the library has. I’m glad that Spratford specifically addressed this in her book.

        However, there are aspects to the book of which librarians should be aware. Spratford chose to define horror as “a story in which… unexplainable phenomena and unearthly creatures threaten the protagonist and provoke terror in the reader”.  That’s a very narrow definition. I recognize that for purposes of writing a reader’s advisory guide it’s necessary to set limits of what qualifies as belonging to a genre, but reader’s advisory librarians attempting to serve horror readers should be aware that many horror readers don’t require there to be a supernatural or unexplainable element in their reading. Because of the way she defines horror, Spratford’s breakdown of subgenres is sometimes problematic. For instance, in her chapter on “shape-shifters”, she included not only werewolf titles but killer animal books, and these two types of books appeal to different audiences. Many killer animal books have no supernatural aspect at all, such as Cujo, Stephen King’s novel about a rabid dog terrorizing his neighborhood (Spratford writes that Cujo “comes under the spell of demonic forces”, but that is not the case). Her chapter “Monsters and Ancient Evil” also combines in one list books that will appeal to different audiences- Lovecraftian fiction and more modern monster novels. In addition, Spratford leaves out the notable category of human horror. Books in this category aren’t literary novels of psychological suspense- they display the worst of human nature, without needing to employ the supernatural. Usually they have graphic gore, violence, and sexual situations (such as in the work of Wrath James White). This category doesn’t fall under Spratford’s definition of horror, and so it isn’t addressed in the book. Spratford  is covering a huge amount of territory in a limited number of pages, but it would really have benefited users, and readers, to have these particular issues dealt with, and hopefully we will see that in the next print edition. In addition to covering a wide variety of authors and subgenres, Spratford addresses whole collection reader’s advisory and mentions several categories of books outside the genre that horror readers might also enjoy, I especially appreciated her mention of nonfiction, as there are a lot of appealing nonfiction titles that horror fiction readers will probably never find on their own.

        Horror is a very difficult genre for both collection development and reader’s advisory. It doesn’t get much respect, or even recognition. The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, Second Edition, although not a perfect tool, does a great job providing resources to librarians serving horror readers. Highly recommended for purchase by public and academic libraries.

Review by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Posted on October 25, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Slasher Girls & Monster Boys edited by April Genevieve Tucholke


Slasher Girls & Monster Boys edited by April Genevieve Tucholke

Speak, 2015

ISBN-13: 978-014751408

Available:

 

 

Slasher Girls & Monster Boys  is an anthology of stories by YA authors, including Kendare Blake, Jonathan Maberry, Carrie Ryan, Leigh Bardugo, and Marie Lu. Each story is based on a horror movie, television show, or fiction, or some combination. Strangely, the inspirations for the stories are only indicated at the end of each story, upside down in tiny print at the bottom of the page. Observant fans with a wide knowledge of the genre will probably be able to hazard some good guesses, but it really doesn’t matter– the theme is incidental, and the stories stand on their own.

Some stories stand out more than others. Nova Ren Suma’s “The Birds of Azalea Street” is a creepy tale about three girls who uncover a neighborhood pedophile. April Genevieve Tucholke’s “The Flicker, The Fingers, The Beat, The Sigh” riffs on I Know What You Did Last Summer, with an outcast girl from school as the victim. The awfulness of the teenagers, and the regret and memories of the narrator, as well as the eventual consequences, are what make this a horrific and tragic story. In “Fat Girl With a Knife” Jonathan Maberry gives us a great character with a taste for revenge who discovers a talent for zombie-killing. I would love to see him do more with this character, as it felt like this ended too quickly.  Megan Shepherd spins a story about a girl who outwits death in “Hide and Seek.”  In “Sleepless”, Jay Kristoff pulls the rug right out from under your feet, just when you think you’ve figured out what’s going on. This is one of the best stories in the book.  In Marie Lu’s powerful “The Girl Without A Face” a boy at the height of privilege is forced to face the consequences of raping a girl who died by suicide by her ghost. What part of this story is most horrifying is up to the perception of the reader. “Stitches”,  by A.G. Howard, while it required a significant suspension of disbelief as regards medical procedures, is an imaginative twist on Frankenstein, and a great character study of a girl whose abusive father makes a deal with a “collector” to have her amputate his body parts and replace them with others in order to pay the bills. Finally “On the I-5” gives us the story of a hitchiker ghost out for revenge.

Some stories didn’t hit quite the right note with me. Carrie Ryan’s “In The Forest, Dark and Deep”, is a surreal, disturbing, and bloody take on Alice in Wonderland. It’s one of the truly horrific tales in the set, but I’m not sure most teens will have the patience for the style. “Emmeline”, by Cat Winters, mixes up several movies and books to create a supernatural tale set in the era of World War I, setting up an uneasy Angela Carter-esque romance that can only end badly. While I enjoyed the story I don’t know that it has a contemporary enough tone to appeal to modern teen readers. “Verse Chorus Verse” gets into the price a parent is willing to pay for their child’s fame, and the build-up is freaky, but as it’s mostly told from the parent’s point of view, it didn’t seem to really belong in a YA anthology.  In”The Dark, Scary Parts and All” a bullied, grief-stricken girl is offered the power to do her worst, if she’s willing to take it. The relationships and decisions in this story just felt off.  “M” is a strange little story that seems to belong more in an Agatha Christie novel than in an anthology of horror stories. I wanted to like it more, as there was a very Edward Gorey-esque influence, and the choice of a blind main character was interesting, but it wasn’t enough. “A Girl Who Dreamed of Snow” seemed more like fantasy than horror, with a shaman girl  sacrificing the men who kidnap her to appease spirits who will end a plague and save humanity from extinction.

A strong majority of the authors in this anthology are women, which seems to be the case overall in YA horror right now, as are the majority of the protagonists. In the cases where the story is told from a boy’s point of view, he is not usually presented in a terribly sympathetic manner, and generally it’s difficult to believe he isn’t getting his just desserts. Very few stories stood out to me as presenting a woman with agency: “Fat Girl With a Knife” has a main character who’s already out for revenge against the school bullies when a zombie outbreak starts, “A Girl Who Dreamed of Snow” has a girl with a plan in place that she carries through, and the girl in “Hide and Seek” is smart, strategic, and tricky. I loved seeing these characters take charge.

While I found this anthology to be a mixed bag, it covers a lot of ground, and I think most readers, especially girls, will find something to enjoy. Recommended.

 

Contains: gore, violence, murder, torture, references to pedophilia, references to rape, references to suicide, body horror

 

Editor’s note: Slasher Girls and Monster Boys was a 2019 Summer Scares YA pick. 

 

Posted on September 11, 2019 by , Reply

Graphic Novel Review: Through the Woods by Emily Carroll (HWA Summer Scares Recommendation, Middle Grade)

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2014

ISBN: 978-1442465954

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

 

Carroll’s Through the Woods includes five short sequential art stories, each one atmospheric and eerie. In “Our Neighbor’s House,” sisters Mary, Beth, and Hannah are left on their own after their father goes out to hunt, with instructions to venture to the neighbors’ house if he did not return by the end of the third day. When he does not return, they do not obey his instructions. Mary disappears, followed by Hannah, leaving only Beth. Before her sisters vanished, they talked of man smiling man wearing a wide brimmed black hat. Beth ventures out to her neighbors’ house, only to meet the strange man, who is not a man.

“A Lady’s Hands are Cold” tells the story of a newlywed couple venturing to his estate, which the heroine discovers to be haunted. A ghostly song leads the new bride through the vast mansion where she picks up deeply disturbing items left throughout the rooms, in the walls, pieces of a woman’s body. As I wrote in my Ax Wound review of Through the Woods in 2017, the song can be considered a character on its own. The winding blood red ectoplasmic ribbon that runs through the panels with white lettering is incredibly effective. After seeing how Carroll uses red in this story, I reread it and saw the implications of the colour itself. The man uses and consumes everything he possesses, including the women in his life. He uses them to death.

In “His Face All Red,” a man confesses to the murder of his brother. The brothers went out to hunt a mysterious beast that had been harassing the village. At the town hall, the young brother volunteers to track and kill the creature, but nobody takes him seriously until his brother stands smiling and declares they will hunt the beast together. He returns home after burying his brother with a story of avenging his brother. Afterward, he takes his brother’s place in the village. But what can he do when his brother comes back?

“My Friend Janna” centers on best friends Yvonne and the titular character. People wanting to talk with their dead relatives travel to visit Janna, who communes with spirits. What they don’t know is that it is all a ruse committed by the two friends. They want to stop, but people just keep coming, yearning to have contact with their loved ones one more time. Yvonne sees something following Janna, but is afraid to tell her friend.

In “The Nesting Place”, opens with the story of a monster that lived in the cellar with thousands of teeth, and a mysterious fog that fell over the town that contained many mouths. Bell’s older brother, Clarence, picks her up from the boarding school to stay with him and his fiancée Rebecca in the countryside after the death of their mother. She is warned by the housekeeper never to wander into the woods near the house, lest she become trapped there as Rebecca had. Bell sees strange things while she stays with Rebecca and Clarence: Rebecca’s teeth seeming to clack inhumanly as she eats, the strange red marks on the housekeeper’s wrists, and seeing Rebecca wander into the forest Bell was warned against exploring.

The five stories are situated between two short pieces. The beginning tells the story of a young girls’ fear of turning off the light at night after she was finished reading lest something pull her into the darkness. The piece at the end of the book presents a story of the same girl dressed in a red cloak walking home through the dark woods, curling up in her bed, and breathing a sigh of relief at the wolf not finding her…yet.

Rereading this after a few years hasn’t changed my mind. Through the Woods is a must-read for those who enjoy atmospheric and period piece horror. While Carroll does not indicate dates of any kind in her stories, it is easy to place time periods in which the stories are set based on attire, environment, and backgrounds in her artwork. Her use of color is deliberate and communicates very specific information to the reader. It’s a hauntingly beautiful graphic novel.

Highly recommended

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

 

Posted on July 27, 2019 by , Reply
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