Home » Posts tagged "YA fiction" (Page 41)

School Scares

School is starting back up again, so what better time to bring out the school stories? While we don’t want to give kids nightmares about starting a new grade, pretty soon they’ll be lugging home reading records for their 100 Book Club, 15-minutes-a-day-of- independent-reading-homework, Accelerated Reader, or whatever various programs the school is using to try to motivate kids into reading. I have to tell you that I personally find that it’s a drag to have to check the boxes, record the minutes, count the pages, or whatever. To be fair, I have kids who read, or at least love to be read to (which is still okay in first grade) and I’d have to follow them constantly with a timer to manage it all. Maybe it’s exciting to see those results on paper if you’ve struggled to reach the goal. But either way, whether you have an eager reader or a struggling one, there are some fantastic scary school stories out there, and I thought I’d direct you to a few of the ones we have reviewed here. This is far from a comprehensive list, of course, but it’s a good place to start! They run the gamut from picture book to YA, so check out the reviews before handing them over to your kids!

Zombie Queen of Newbury High by Amanda Ashby

Eighth Grade Bites: The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod by Heather Brewer

High School Bites by Liza Conrad

Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan (this is one of my favorites from way back)

Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins

Scary School by Derek Taylor Kent

Monster’s Proof by Richard Lewis

Nightmare Academy: Monster Hunters by Dean Lorey

Monster and Me by Robert Marsh

Sucks to Be Me: The All-True Confessions of Mina Hamilton, Teen Vampire(maybe) by Kimberly Pauley

Vampire High by Douglas Rees

The Librarian from the Black Lagoon by Mike Thaler

Dragonbreath by Ursula Vernon

Monster and Me by Robert Marsh

Posted on August 31, 2012 by , Reply

Monster Movie Month: Guest Post by K.H. Koehler- Godzilla On My Mind

How can you possibly have Monster Movie Month without Godzilla? While technically most of the Godzilla and other giant monster movies of Japanese cinema (referred to as kaiju) aren’t horror movies, you can’t deny that there are some truly creative approaches to monster-making in the genre. K.H. Koehler, a self-confessed kaijuholic and author of many books, including her own ongoing kaiju series, The Kaiju Hunter, has taken some time to share her Godzilla obsession and discuss Godzilla fiction.

For more Godzilla goodness, check out our Monster Movie Month page here.

 

Godzilla On My Mind

By K.H. Koehler


So with Toho beating the drums about a new, upcoming Godzilla movie, I can’t help but look back at my lifetime obsession with the big grey guy. Yes, I said grey, because, let’s be frank, G-man is grey, not green, and calling him green risks you receiving a tongue-lashing from the fans.

 

I remember when the first big Godzilla revolution hit our shores, and the waves it made. This was back in the day of the ill-fated Tristar Godzilla, known surreptitiously among the G-fans as “GINO”–Godzilla in Name Only. The movie was something of a legendary kaiju-fail, but its presence did get Godzilla on the fiction shelves, however briefly. Though aimed toward young adults, these books caused adult fans to crowd the fiction shelves in Wal-marts all across the country–at least, in a time when readers of any type crowded shelves. Below, I’ll talk a little bit about the books.

 

Godzilla by Kazuhisa Iwata and Mike Richardson is something of an introductory guide for Godzilla virgins into the wild and wacky world of kaijudom. It chronicles the “return of Godzilla” and reads a bit like a literary version of the film Godzilla 1985, only with teens. It’s a good enough book, though it treads no real new ground.

 

Godzilla 2000 by Marc Cerasini is a bit more fun and chronicles a secret government experiment intent on training teens to defeat monsters using super hi-tech (for their time) weapons and vehicles. I highly recommend it for action aficionados.

 

Next we have Godzilla at World’s End by Marc Cerasini and Godzilla Vs. the Space Monster by Scott Ciencin, which came out pretty much simultaneously and calls back to the old Showa (1960’s and 1970’s) series of “big battle” Godzilla, whereby Godzilla goes up against some very familiar (and popular) foes like Biollante, King Ghidorah and others.

 

Finally, we have Godzilla Vs. the Robot Monsters by Marc Cerasini which sort of rounds out the whole collection by calling back to one of Godzilla’s greatest and most dangerous foes, Mecha-Godzilla.

 

There are many other books, of course, both on the history of kaiju as well as fiction books for all different kinds of readerships, but if you want a solid place to start, and you can find them (I would check Ebay and set Google alerts to the book, if you’re interested) I suggest starting with the above books. And yes, I own them all. Forever and ever and ever. 😉

 

With the newly revised interest in Godzilla, we can only hope that a new collection of kaiju books will hit the shelves–or Kindle readers, be that as it may. We need more Godzilla weighing the shelves, and let’s be frank, who wouldn’t want Godzilla on their e-book reading device these days?

 

–K. H. Koehler

Posted on July 31, 2012 by , Reply

Ann Aguirre Wins A RITA for Enclave

People are sometimes surprised to realize that romance and horror have the same roots, but every once in awhile we get to see where they intertwine, and this is one of those times. Ann Aguirre, known for her dark and gritty urban fantasy and paranormal fiction for adults,  just won the RITA for Young Adult Romance for her post-apocalyptic novel Enclave, which we reviewed here.

Congratulations, Ann!

 

Posted on July 29, 2012 by , Reply
First « 3940414243 » Last