‘SUMMER SCARES’ READING PROGRAM: GINGER NUTS OF HORROR BREAKS DOWN THE ‘YOUNG ADULT’ CATEGORY

 
United for Libraries, Book Riot, and Library Journal/School Library Journal and the Horror Writers Association have banded together to publish a list of nine books they hope will act as gateways into the horror genre for new readers, both adult and child. You can read more about it here:

https://bookriot.com/2019/02/14/summer-scares-first-annual-reading-list-announced/

The nine books below form their first Summer Scares Reading List and it is hoped that these books will lead their readers to other lists and books creating life-long readers. This is an admirable idea and certainly one worth getting behind. But will it work?

As I am writing from a Young Adult fiction point of view I am only going to comment upon the titles in the YA section. You can draw your own conclusions on the adult titles by following the link above for more information. At first glance I found the YA selection to be very underwhelming and I see little point of releasing a list (and making such a big deal out of it) with so few books on it. Horror is a very wide-ranging genre and a mere three selections does not do it justice.  However, we’ve been told the Summer Scares committee will also release themed lists of even more “read-alike” titles, so hopefully these later lists will include a much broader range of titles. These are the books included; I’m only going to comment on the YA three:

YOUNG ADULT
Rotters by Daniel Kraus (Ember, 2012)
Slasher Girls and Monster Boys, edited by April Genevieve Tucholke (Speak, 2016)
Devil and Winnie Flynn by Micol Ostow (Penguin Random House Publisher Services, 2015)
 
MIDDLE GRADE
Doll Bones Holly Black (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2015)
Through the Woods by Emily Carroll (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2014)
The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste (Algonquin Young Readers, 2016)
 
Ginger Nuts of Horror reviewed Rotters in 2016 and this is what we said:
 
“Highly original, and pretty demented novel, about a straight-laced teenager sent to live with the father he doesn’t know in rural Iowa. Moving to the sticks is the least of Joey’s worries as is father soon introduces him to the world of modern-day grave robbing. Kraus is relatively unknown in the UK, but is an established filmmaker, columnist and novelist in the USA.”
 
Rotters is an outstanding novel but it is not a good entry point for new horror readers. It is a very challenging read and many teenagers will find it very difficult and it will not have broad appeal. From a librarian’s point of view, it is also a VERY difficult sell, I know this from experience. I have had this book in my school library since 2012 and it has been borrowed ONCE in those six or seven years! I recommend horror all the time, know YA inside out, so public librarians who do not know the subject so well are going to struggle to sell this book even more than I have. For programs like this to succeed the chosen books require hooks which will reel teenager readers in with quick thirty second sells. This book is great but has the hook of a lead balloon.
 
Our accompanying article has a selection of horror novels with great teen grabbing hooks. Here’s three examples from the other article:
 
The Death House: Teens with an undisclosed virus are sent to remote prison hospitals to die.
Frozen Charlotte: Tiny killer dolls the size of a Nickle will sew your eyes shut if you don’t watch out.
The Call: Kids are ripped out of time for three minutes and sent to ancient Ireland to fight or die.
 
I have been a school librarian since 1994 and over these years have seen many reading programs rise, fail and fall. What makes a good one? First and foremost, it is the quality of the books and this is where Summer Scares comes up short, the books just are not good enough. You need a strong short-list to back up your flag-ship program, I do not even think three books is substantial enough to qualify as a proper short-list.
 
The school where I work participates in such a program, called the Trinity School Book Award, which we internally call the Six Book Challenge, and because of the strength of the short-list a massive amount of kids have read all six books. It is not genre based but connected by theme. Over twenty local schools have participated, but it would have achieved the fraction of its success if the books had not been appealing to the kids involved. Selection is the key and the group of librarians on the committee spent a massive amount of time and discussion on the shortlist. There are some big names of the Summer Scares committee, so I’m surprised by the limited choice of books.
 
I was equally surprised to see the Devil and Winnie Flynn on the list of three books, as it is a very slow and dull story of a teenage girl who goes to work on a supernatural virtual reality TV show with her aunt. It might have some fans, but I would never consider this book as a good entry point for those new to horror. It is loaded with horror in-jokes, is not scary and many kids will find the slug-slow pace turgid. One of Ginger Nuts of Horror reviewers thirteen year-old-daughter covered this book in the accompanying article. She is a very confident YA horror reader and she also gave it the thumbs down and found the ending particularly weak.

‘AJ’, or reviewer, also provides a list of what she believes as excellent entry points to kids and YA horror, many of which have previously been reviewed on Ginger Nuts of Horror. Some of these cross into other genres including fantasy, very realistic horror and an adult novel accessible to stronger teen readers.

The third book is probably the strongest Slasher Girls and Monster Boys a multi-author anthology which features many top YA authors including Kendare Blake, Jonathan Maberry, Carrie Ryan, Danielle Paige, Cat Winters and Marie Lu. Who between them sell a lot of YA novels. Short stories play a major role in horror fiction, it’s a shame so few kids seem to read them. Let’s hope this book will help change that.

Summer Scares has the likes of Grady Hendrix involved in the program and dropping his own recommendations. I love Grady, but I’m afraid his name will mean nothing to any teenager, and it’s a shame there are not any contemporary YA authors on their panel. I’m sure the likes of superb authors, such as Amy Lukavics, would have loved to be involved. You can find out who the panel of six are here:



Of course, you’re welcome to disagree with everything I say. Should you fancy it check out what the Monster Librarian has to say about Summer Scares, she really knows her stuff and has and informed opinion:


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Ginger Nuts of Horror tracked down Becky Spratford who is on the panel and she had this to say and comments upon why the lists are so short:
“The Summer Scares Program is NOT supposed to be comprehensive. The idea is to take 3 titles in each category picked by American Librarians to get horror in the mix for established summer reading programs. Then we will be leading them to longer lists like your [Ginger Nuts of Horror] and others to give them more options.  It’s more an advertisement to librarians saying ‘Hey, here are some horror titles that are preapproved. And hey, here are some more lists.’”
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Let’s hope that Summer Scares truly does expand beyond these very limited initial selections and taps into the vast range of reading lists on the Young Blood section of Ginger Nuts of Horror and other sites which cover YA otherwise this program will disappear without trace and very quickly.
Be sure to check out our accompany review of Devil and Winnie Flynn which also includes a dozen great horror ‘entry’ novels chosen by our teen reviewer ‘AJ’ for kids aged around 10-14.
Tony Jones