Monsters for Halloween

Lisa talked a bit about this book in an earlier post, explaining that it scared the bejezus out of her when she read it. I second that emotion. I'm the type who has to leave the room when commercials about scary movies come on TV. And recently, there's lots of scary movie commercials on TV. There's that weird "Case 39" movie with Renee Z., and Wes Craven's got a new one out, "My Soul to Take." Don't ask me what any of these are about--like I said, I leave the room when the commercials come on. All I have to hear is the creepy music, or see claws, or heads spinning, or children saying things like, "I see dead people," and I'm outta there.

So WHY? Why would I subject myself to Monstrumologist, a bona-fide horror YA story if ever I've read one? I guess because the cover's so cool. I mean, just look at it. And the title's cool. I mean, do "monstrumologists" even exist? Is that a real word? And then Rick Yancey is coming to Knoxville in March, to a middle school where I'm doing some research with some bad-ass teachers who use YAL every day to motivate the life-long love of reading in the adolescents they teach. So I figure I better be familiar with his oeuvre (although I've yet to read his Alfred Kropp series, or his books for adults. But I will, before March. I promise).

There are certainly monsters in this one--monsters so scary you hope to GODDESS they are just fiction. But what's scary about this one, too, is the humans--humans who are so ambitious and driven by their hunger for knowledge (and bloodlust) they will do anything to satisfy that hunger. The lines between right and wrong blur here--or, at least, they do when the scientist and the serial killer start trying to rationalize their madness.

But there's also the stuff of great YA fiction here: Will Henry, the orphan-monster-apprentice, who longs for his dead parents, for connection, to anyone--even if it's a mad scientist who must bear the weight of his own emotionally absent father's misdeeds--is the clear(er) conscience, the lone light in the underground tunnels of human darkness. He comes off clean and true, and you'll find yourself rooting for him and hoping he's got your back when the anthro-popo show up.

I think sophisticated readers will appreciate all the allusions in this one--this book is a literary scavenger hunt in its own right. I could also see teachers pairing this with Frankenstein and/or using the book in a small-group literature circles activity (perhaps with Nancy Farmer's House of the Scorpion and Pearson's Adoration of Jenna Fox, or even some of Darwin's works) and focusing on the theme of "humans playing God."

Get it, and read it, but don't put this in the "by the bed" stack. You'll want to read this one in broad daylight, with all the lights on.