When Christopher Creed disappears from Steepleton, the rumors fly. He spent his life being bullied, and his disappearance seems the obvious outcome for a high-school misfit. With only a cryptic email to the school principal to provide clues, the town is awash in rumors. Did Chris run away? Did he commit suicide? Was he murdered?

Torey Adams is a super popular guy. He has an A-list girlfriend, he’s a football player. He’s also mentioned in Christopher’s goodbye email. And thereby becomes a suspect in Christopher’s disappearance. Wishing to set the record straight, Torey becomes involved in his own investigation of Chris’s disappearance. He finds out that some of the best people to depend on in Steepleton are others who are also misfits—Christopher’s neighbor, Ali, who has an (undeserved) reputation as the school slut and her boyfriend, Bo, who is a ‘boon,’ a guy from the boondocks, considered angry white trash.

To help in his search, Torey sets up a website about Christopher’s story. He, Ali, and Bo begin to suspect foul play by Christopher’s own mother, who seems to be mentally unstable. They get involved in breaking and entering Chris’s home in hopes of finding a diary. Torey has a frightening session with a psychic, and he feels that Chris’s body is in the old Indian graveyard behind his house.

I read this novel when it came out about 10 years ago and loved it. It was the first book about bullying that I’d read with a realistic characterization of the bullied boy. Christopher is weird. He is irritating. He says and does entirely inappropriate things.  But does that mean it’s OK to berate him, use him as a punching bag? Of course not, but the kids in Steepleton do, and then when he goes missing, they all point the finger at someone else. They are mean, mean, mean—and unwilling to take responsibility for their behavior. Having a few of them learn to do so makes the book a great read. Add to that the suspense with entering the Creed home, the psychic, the graveyard in storming weather. Totally compelling.

What reminded me of this book after more than a decade (read in those pre-blogging days) is that a sequel came out recently, Following Christopher Creed. I had to read it to find out what happened to all the characters, especially Ali, Bo, and Torey.

Well, you know I’m afraid that if I say something is wonderful just to get you to read it, you won’t trust me again if I’m overstating the case. So, the truth: I was disappointed in the sequel, mostly because the pace of the book is really off. It drags quite a bit because it’s repetitive. I think the repetition is the author’s effort to have everything make sense for the reader who never read The Body of Christopher Creed. But it doesn’t work. If you don’t read the first book, you won’t get a good sense of the three characters I mentioned—Ali, Bo, and Torey.

In Following Christopher Creed, a college newspaper reporter, Mike Mavic, comes to Steepleton to write a story about the whole Christopher Creed disappearance. He was bullied himself—in fact, he is almost blinded in a bullying incident and has a service dog to guide him.  He’s always been interested in Torey Adams’s website about Creed and follows it for the five years since Creed disappeared.

Mike arrives in town just after reading about the discovery of a body, a possible murder victim, that he read about on the Creed website. He interviews locals and finds the town still much affected by the Creed disappearance, but no one has gotten any nicer. If anything, the teens are the same bullying crowd, seeking weakness in others, with the hope of hurting them.

Mike connects with Christopher’s younger brother, Justin, who has big problems of his own. He’s bipolar and has recently become an addict as he tries to self medicate. In his manic states, he believes that he can use the power of ‘quantum thought’ to draw Christopher back to him. With his wild unpredictability, the vicious town teens, the strange occurrences in the lightning field (where lightning seems to come up out of the ground instead of from the sky), the decomposing body in that field—well, there is a lot to pull the reader through the story.

If you’re like me and want to find out about all those favorites characters from the first book, I do recommend that you read Following Christopher Creed—just speed-read and skip through the repetition. The end is quite a shocker.

More interesting books for high school students who are learning to read or improving their reading skills. Today we’re looking at Night Fall, a horror series.

At Colony High, we’ve created a section in the book stacks just for these new books. Look under the call number 372.41. (Don’t be shy about asking for help if you need it. That’s what we’re here for!)

Night Fall titles:

Unthinkable by Shirley Duke

Omar Phillips is Bridgewater High’s favorite local teen author. His Facebook fans can’t wait for his next horror story. Lately, though, Omar’s imagination has turned against him, presenting him with horrifying visions of death and destruction. The only way to stop the visions is to write them down, until they start coming true. Sophie Minax, the mysterious Goth girl who’s been following Omar at school, tells him how to end the visions, but the only thing worse than Sophie’s cure may be what happens if he ignores it.

Thaw by Rick Jasper

“A July storm caused a major power outage inBridgewater. Now a research project at the Institute for Cryogenic Experimentation has been ruined and the thawed-out bodies of twenty-seven federal inmates are missing. At first, Dani Kraft didn’t think much of the breaking news. But after her best friend Jake disappears, a mysterious visitor connects the dots for Dani. Jake has been taken in by an infamous cult leader. To get him back, Dani must enter a dangerous, alternate reality where a defrosted cult leader is beginning to act like some kind of god.”–Amazon.com.

The Protectors by Val Karlsson

“Luke’s life has never been ‘normal.’ How could it be, with his mother holding seances and his half-crazy stepfather working asBridgewater’s mortician?”–P. [4] of cover.

The Club by Stephanie Watson

Bored after school, Josh and his friends try out an old game called “Black Magic” that promises the players good fortune at the expense of those who have wronged them. As the club members’ luck starts skyrocketing and horror befalls their enemies, the game stops being a joke. How can they end the power they’ve unleashed? Answers lie in an old diary, but ending the game may be deadlier than any curse.

Skin by Rick Jasper

Nick’s face is breaking out. The symptoms, besides his complexion, include an abiding coldness and nightmares. As his face worsens, a neighbor sends over a priest. The priest remembers a teenager who had a similar attack. He has the teen’s journal. Another teen comes into the clinic with a similar case. Does the resolution lie in the old journal?

Messages from Beyond by Stephanie Watson

Some guy named Ethan Davis has been texting Cassie. He seems to know all about her– but she can’t place him. He’s not in Bridgewater High’s yearbook either. Cassie thinks one of her friends is punking her. But she can’t ignore the strange coincidences– like how Ethan looks just like the guy in her nightmares. Cassie’s search for Ethan leads her to a shocking discovery, and a struggle for her life. Will Cassie be able to break free from her mysterious stalker?”–P. [4] of cover.

   Blink and Caution

While on the prowl for ‘guy books’ this week, I found a star.

“Guy books” is a sort of weird idea for me because it means that guys should like them. But girls should like them, too. When people in the book universe say ‘guy book,’ what they really mean is ‘not exclusively girl book.’

Blink and Caution is the story of two runaway teens, living on the street, desperate. We meet Blink first—so nicknamed because he is so nervous, so full of ‘Captain Panic’—that he has a tic, blinks constantly. He is prowling through a hotel, hoping to find some decent food leftover in the hallway, a room service tray put back out with lots of the meal left. Unfortunately, what he finds is a weird sort of criminal event across the hall. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but after a group of four men leave the room, Blink finds a wallet with 600 dollars and a cell phone. By picking up most of the money and taking the cell, Blink unwittingly enters into a crime that is national news.

Caution is so nicknamed because she considers herself toxic, harmful to those around her. Though the narrator doesn’t say directly why this is, as readers, we soon guess. (We are meant to guess, but Caution just can’t face telling the story). After running away from home, Caution finds herself hooked up with a drug-dealer who controls her, who beats her when he feels like it. She thinks he may kill her. In fact, she thinks she deserves to be killed. It’s a little miracle that she figures out how to run away from him, and of course, he is tailing her, actually has implanted a GPS on her clothing.

Blink finds the picture and phone number of a beautiful girl on the stolen cell. She’s the daughter of an important CEO whom all the news sources say has been kidnapped. But Blink saw him walk out of the hotel room. He decides to call the daughter and tell her that her dad is OK. Big mistake.

When Caution, having been rolled by a meth addict for all the money she took from the drug dealer, decides to steal from Blink, the two become inescapably connected and absolutely over their heads. That they have each other isn’t a given. One might desert the other, fearful of what will happen. But they both also have a sense that there’s nothing more to lose in life. By sticking together, they may learn to trust again and find their way in the world, forgive themselves for their imperfections.

Blink and Caution is super suspenseful. In addition it’s unusual in the telling, Chapters alternate between Blink and Caution. However, Blink’s chapters are told in the second person (“You lower your voice, curl into yourself.” ). It’s hard for a writer to make this work, but Wynne-Jones pulls it off. In fact, his excellent writing is one of the reasons you won’t put the book down. So if you’re a budding writer yourself, read this for a great example. If you’re not, just read it for the great, fast-action story.

Two New Series 

I’m always on the lookout for books that appeal to teens who are English learners. Unfortunately, they aren’t always easy to find. Most books written at a reading level that challenges you and pushes your reading skills are boring—they don’t discuss teen issues.

I found two new book series that I think may work for English learners. The first is called Night Fall. It’s horror fiction. The second is called Surviving Southside. It’s about urban (inner-city) teens at Southside High School. We now have some of the titles in our library and others are on the way. Come on over to the library and check one out—if you like it, check back for new titles. Let me know what you think!

Horror: The Top Ten for Teens

With teachers bringing classes in for horror and mystery book talks near Halloween, I thought it was a good time to look at our collection of teen horror and update it. One of the problems I have anymore is in defining horror. So many books with vampires, werewolves and zombies are just romances with differently-abled characters. One of the book review magazines I read –Booklist—decided to rescue librarians by picking their favorite ten teen horror novels. None of the novels are heartwarming nor are they romances.

They’re horror.

I had most of the titles at Colony, but none at Chaffey, so I went shopping. (So Tigers, check before Halloween. I think they’ll be here.) I read my first on the list. And, yes, I thought it had the creepy factor. It’s also by the author whose books are most often challenged right now—and since it’s Banned Books Week and since our frosh classes are having a look at this author—I decided to start with Lauren Myracle.

Bliss by Lauren Myracle

Publisher’s blurb on the novel: Having grown up in a California commune, Bliss sees her aloof grandmother’s Atlanta world as a foreign country, but she is determined to be nice as a freshman at an elite high school, which makes her the perfect target for . . . a girl obsessed with the occult.

Reason Booklist picked it: Creepiest sleepover scene of all time.

What other pros say: Publishers’ Weekly “Charles Manson Family murders, racism, ghosts, blood sacrifices and prom queens–and, remarkably, supports this outré mix with clever timing and well-placed red herrings.”

VOYA: “kept me reading all through the night. It’s geared toward a mature audience of readers who are strong in what they believe.”

What I have to say: hippie-dippy craziness of the Summer of Love (1969) turns sinister, plus the main character has an ESP connection with spirits, so what’s better than that? Myracle does make it better with deeper probing of the period—the KKK; interracial dating; the Charles Mansion Family murders (The Tate-LaBianca murders) set against the ultra-sweet popular TV show of that time, The Andy Griffith Show, and the wonderful town of Mayberry.

No silly, make-believe endings here. This one’s serious enough for your teachers to love—a good choice for outside reading. In general, it’s not blood and guts violence, but it is for mature readers because it is creepy, creepy, creepy.

Trash takes place in an unnamed third-world country in South America. (The main characters want to go to Sao Paulo, Brazil, so they must be somewhere close enough to have heard of the city.) Raphael, Gardo, and Rat—three “dumpsite” boys—keep off starvation by digging through trash, recycling items and hoping to find money or items of value. Since there is no sanitation in the poorer districts of the city, what they often find is human excrement. It’s hard to imagine a more miserable life than theirs, surrounded by filth, hunger and disease.

One day the impossible happens. Raphael finds a leather bag with several items including a map, a wallet with some money, a driver’s license, some pictures, and a key. Since he always works with Gardo, he splits the money with him. But when the police come looking for the leather bag, Raphael senses it is very important and doesn’t reveal his secret. He gets Rat, the most destitute of all the children, to hide it.

Rat is able to identify the type of key Raphael has found; it belongs to a locker in the train station where Rat used to beg. Once the boys find and open the locker, they know they are in serious trouble. They’re onto a scandal, and the corruption goes way past the local police, all the way to figures in the national government. People are dying in this cover-up, and the boys need to decide whether to collect a reward or seek justice for the poor.

This is a good mystery for everyone. Most of the story is told, in alternating chapters, by the three boys, although adults, such as the priest who runs the local school for the dumpsite children, give the reader some important background information. Join them on their adventure in fighting governmental corruption in a country where political dishonesty is the norm.

First the confession: I think if Karen Russell wrote a manual on how to put a bicycle together, I’d pretend not to understand the assembly process, so that I could read it over and over. Her language is so fresh, original and creative, I just want it to last.

I know that starling language alone doesn’t make a book interesting for many students (or many adults for that matter). But we are all lucky in that Russell’s wild imagination extends to the plot of her story as well as to the language. This is one of the most fascinating and weird novels I’ve read.

Much of the narrative is told by Ava although her brother, Kiwi, leaves home and then his story is told in alternating chapters. Ava, Kiwi, and their sister Osceola Bigtree are the children of a couple who own a tourist attraction called Swamplandia! on an island off Florida. They raise and wrestle alligators (which they call Seths). When the mother, Hilola Bigtree, dies at thirty-six from ovarian cancer, the family loses its star and Swamplandia! loses most of its business. The attraction’s doom appears to be sealed when a macabre version of a Disney-style attraction opens on the mainland—The World of Darkness.

Family members try to save their business with Kiwi off to the World of Darkness to work; Ava raising a red alligator, hoping that its coloring will fascinate new tourists; and the Bigtree dad going off to seek backers for his Darwinism feature idea. But with their father gone, Osceola’s (Ossie’s) obsession with ghosts appears to become a possession. She has a spectral boyfriend who seems to inhabit her body. When she disappears, Ava, alone on the island, must face the Underworld and its inhabitants to save her.

It’s hard to explain why this book is so fascinating because it doesn’t fit the typical teen supernatural genre at all (or maybe that’s why it is fascinating). It’s hard to know when ghosts are real; when adults are friends rather than predators; when the past is inhabiting the present; who is in danger and who is safe. Add to this that throughout the story, there is much irony and humor derived from the siblings’ antics, from their utter unfamiliarity with the mainland and behaviors that are common in ordinary lives.

Swamplandia! is another book you could use to impress your teachers by comparing it to the classic works you are reading in school. The most obvious comparison would be to Heart of Darkness, but I saw some of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man in the way that the characters were losing everything and even a bit from a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne (“Young Goodman Brown”) when a hair ribbon from a lost girl floats out of the sky and is caught by the seeker.

I’d recommend this weird, wild story broadly, but if you are a teen who likes to write creatively and seeks good examples, Swamplandia! is a must.

    The Marbury Lens

Wow—this is the creepiest YA book I’ve ever read!

Before I get to the details, I do want to admit that it’s deeply flawed—because if you read it and then are disappointed in the fact that the Marbury world and Jack’s ‘real’ world don’t meld well, you won’t think, ‘Dang! Ms. W. will say anything to get us to read a book.’ So for the sake of honesty, I admit that I was mad when the book ended as it did—it felt like the author just couldn’t work out his vision, and so he quit. That said, perhaps he was saving the tie-up for a sequel as so many YA books these days are trilogies. The fact remains that I was riveted by the first chapters and had to finish the book ASAP. The fact remains that I think this is a book that guys who almost never read will be pulled into and have to finish.

The blurb that downloads with The Marbury Lens’ cataloging information is a good summary:

“After being kidnapped and barely escaping, sixteen-year-old Jack goes to London with his best friend Connor, where someone gives him a pair of glasses that send him to an alternate universe where war is raging, he is responsible for the survival of two younger boys, and Connor is trying to kill them all. “

The alternate world is Marbury—it’s a brutal, post-apocalyptic universe where bands of monstrous people with one black eye and one white eye, dressed in nothing but codpieces (little garments to cover their genitals) made of human scalps and necklaces made of human teeth roam the desert and mountains, finding and killing ordinary humans, who are then eaten by hoards of large insects. Connor, Jack’s best friend in life, is one of these monsters in Marbury.

Over and over, Jack uses the lens, or glasses, that are an entrance to Marbury because he knows that in that world, he is responsible for the well being of two younger boys.

I am very interested in what students think of this book, but here’s an important caveat: It has a record attached that says it’s for 9 years and up. I think this is there because all YA books just get that designation automatically from the publisher. But some are for more mature readers, and I (yes, liberal reader that I am) would NOT recommend this book for anyone under 14 years. I do believe that teens can read about scary, terrible things because scary, terrible things happen in the real world, and it helps to know what they are. But in fairness to more conservative readers, I’ll add that I went online to see if I could find a review by a parent. I did find one from a woman who bought the book for her 15-year-old son, but read it first and thought it was totally inappropriate. So, keep that in mind.

Jack, who is drunk and passed out in a park, is kidnapped early on. His kidnapper is mentally ill and a sexual abuser. Clearly he has kidnapped (and very possibly killed) other kids. Clearly, he intends to kill Jack, but he wants to rape him first. Though he doesn’t succeed, the details of his efforts really aren’t for kids. Nor are the details of Marbury, which has reverted to a sort of Dark Ages, with violent hand-to-hand combat, heads cut off and nailed to walls through eye sockets—well, you get the idea.

Jack has redeeming qualities, including his needs to protect the two younger boys in Marbury. He’s actually a very nice guy in a horrific situation. I just needed there to be some explanation of how he got there, how the terror of his kidnapping was connected to Marbury.

This one isn’t on my summer reading list, but I want to make a quick note of it because I have a couple of students each year who want to read something with vampires that doesn’t fit the teen ‘Twilight’ mold. These students are happy to read a longer book and are looking for some serious vampire lore. Well, it’s been a few years since I read The Historian, and while I don’t remember many of the details (ah, aging!), I can tell you that it’s the perfect book for those students who want to read something that encompasses the vast store of vampire mythology.

The Historian centers around a sixteen-year-old American girl in the 1970s whose father is a diplomat and travels a lot, leaving her with a caretaker in Amsterdam. (Her mother is dead. And although I’m calling her ‘the girl,’ that isn’t just because my memory is bad. She remains unnamed.) One day she discovers a weird journal in her father’s paper. It has nothing written in its pages, but it does have a strange dragon image on the first page with the word “Drakulya” imprinted there. With it is a packet of letters. She begins to read, “My dear and unfortunate successor…” Right then, she knows that her dad has a second, secret life, that he is in constant danger and that he has been protecting her from the truth.

Basically, when her father tells her how he got the journal and how it has affected his life—it appears that his own mentor, history professor Bartholomew Rossi, was killed over it—she starts a trip across Europe seeking out the historical and cruel Vlad the Impaler. And she has to go it without dad because he mysteriously disappears (as did Rossi years before). However, she isn’t entirely alone; she has a companion (and romantic interest) to help her.

The novel will take you through all the folklore that causes people to associate the real Vlad with the preeminent vampire Dracula (and tell you all the horrific stuff the historical Vlad actually did to people—they didn’t call him the Impaler for nothing). One of the most important things that she has to do is figure out whether Dracula is still alive, not an easy task. If he is dead, where was he really buried? She tracks down all the places that legend says he has been interred. Did someone really cut off his head? This novel is as much a mystery as it is a book of the supernatural. Reading it, you’ll become engrossed in the heroine’s search as she uses research, maps, old manuscripts—anything she can find—to go from city to city throughout Europe in her quest for Dracula and to find out what happened to her father.

Generally, I review books that have wide appeal, but I needed to add this because it is such a ‘big’ story—large scale, romance, gothic/horror, intense vampire lore—that it’s perfect for the two or three of you each year who seek just such a novel. And, hey—one of the details that I do remember is that it has a truly evil, living-dead librarian. Enjoy.

(For the review of the first book in the series, Eighth Grade Bites, click here.)

The series is still fun with a combination of goofy loser action—Is Vlad ever going to get over being shy and get the girl? It’s pretty obvious that Meredith wants him—and some serious lessons on vampire powers and behavior as well as action-packed fighting against those who would like to slay Vlad.

Vlad’s now in high school and his troubles start with the same bullies after him—only now they are catching and beating him on a regular basis. To add to all his problems, a school outcast is figuring out that Vlad is no ordinary guy. And, according to Uncle Otis, a vampire slayer has been contracted to find and kill Vlad. As Vlad must learn to protect himself, he ventures to Siberia with Otis in order to meet Vikas, the vampire teacher who will helps Vlad both read and control thoughts. But does Vlad want to control others’ minds? He’d better if he hopes to survive both the slayer and his enemies on the international vampire council.

Then Vlad might be able to answer the question: is he the Pravus, a vampire born of a human mother, who will rule the vampire world and enslave all humankind?

Quick, campy, but with lots of twists and turns.