IT'S ALIVE! @ your library®

an introduction by Angelina Benedetti

“Ewwwwwwww!” What’s so Horrible About Horror?

For me, it is rats. Every time I see a book with a rat on the cover, I get that shivery skin-crawling feeling that goes to the end of my toes. Then I remember that it is not really a rat, only a picture of one, and my heart slows to its usual rhythm.

Horror for teens is not really a genre. It is our reaction to the book, or the rat, that makes it horrifying. Even though the horror is confined to the page, we still react in a physical way, as if whatever is inside the story can crawl right out at us. It is that ability to feel the fear and come away unscathed that makes horror so appealing. We get all of the shivers and no blood on our hands when we set the book aside.

Teens seem to have a need to feel that fear, as evidenced by the popularity of shocker, gross-out, supernatural and altogether scary books. Is it that the good guys and bad guys are easier to tell apart? Or maybe it is because those vampires and werewolves go through physical transformations that make puberty feel like a bump in the road? I think I am such a fan because the world is a scary place and the more I read scary books, the easier it is for me to deal with the six o’clock news.

Horror has been a part of storytelling from the very beginning. Think of that awful scene in Homer’s Odyssey where Odysseus stakes the Cyclops’ eye. It has been a part of our teen collections as well. The “classics” – Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and The Tales of Edgar Allen Poe—find new readers every year. The modern masters--Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and John Saul—beckon from beneath black and bold paperback covers. Newcomers Darren Shan (Cirque du Freak) and Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (In the Forests of the Night) have found their places alongside them. Graphic novels have joined the mix. You might not want to read 30 Days of Night by Steve Niles before going to bed. Niles’ vampires were safely feeding on the population of Barrow, Alaska, but I felt sure one was breathing down my neck the minute I turned out the light.

A book does not need to contain supernatural elements to be horrifying. Robert Cormier’s After the First Death is the chilling story of the terrorist hijacking of a school bus. After reading it, I remember thinking that fear has a smell. His book The Chocolate War is sickening reading if you know how it feels to be bullied. The violent conclusion of Gail Giles’ Shattering Glass leaves readers stunned, while M. T. Anderson’s Feed leaves you knowing how it feels to have a computer eat you alive. Nonfiction can be particularly satisfying. John Fleischman introduced us to Phineas Gage, the man with a spike through his brain in Phineas Gage: a gruesome but true story about brain science. We feel what it was like to survive an ocean of hungry sharks in Peter Nelson’s Left for Dead: a young man’s search for justice for the USS Indianapolis.

For every reader, there is a book that makes him or her say “Ewwwwww!” The horror reader just likes the feeling. This Teen Read Week, consider taking time to cultivate your inner “Ick.” This section of the Teen Reading Web site is a gold mine of information about books and programs that go bump in the night developed by YALSA's Teen Read Week committee. It contains a section designed to help you prepare to celebrate, which has a list of Web sites and articles about horror and links to Web pages in the Resources section; information for librarians celebrating Teen Read Week for the first time; different ways to celebrate, including programming ideas from years past as well as ideas specific to this year’s theme, It’s Alive @ Your Library. Enjoy!

And I promise to save the rat books for you.