Horror is a tricky genre... As a child, I didn't particularly appreciate horror. The Creature Double Feature on Channel 38, featuring those awesome B movies of the 50's and 60's - from Godzilla to a space movie where the astronauts, stranded on a hostile planet, eat mushrooms that in turn transform the unsuspecting cast into giant people-eating mushrooms, perpetually gave me nightmares.
But many kids do appreciate horror - the vicariously felt fear, the curiosity appeased, the adrenaline rush. My sister loved those movies that I couldn't stomach. And lots of kids turn to horror fiction.
I've been reassessing the genre myself lately - trying out a few different titles. I finished Rick Yancey's Monstrumologist, which reads like a strange combination of Mary Shelley and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The book is the first episode from the young protagonist's journal of his life as an apprentice to a monster scientist. The narration is well constructed, clever, funny at some moments, and certainly horrific as we follow Will's escapades in hunting down a "pod" of man-eating Anthropophagi. The book left me queasy....
I've also been listening to Anthony Horowitz's Gatekeeper series (Raven's Gate is the first book). This is probably more of a thriller than horror, though the distinction is hard to clarify. Matt, as orphan like Will, is being held captive by a coven of witches who hope to sacrifice him. There's plenty of murder and mayhem here too. And this one also left me uncomfortable... though not as much as Yancy did.
So what draws one person, and not another, to horror. And how much violence is too much for young readers? And why did I feel compelled to finish both of these books without particularly liking either? I've got to keep thinking about this one.
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