Vampire Spectacular: The Intro

As I mentioned in my very first post, I am keeping this blog for a Young Adult resources and services class I am taking at library school. The class is preparing us, Future Librarians, for the topics and issues we'll face in Young Adult services. There is one topic that is so pressing right now in YA services that it comes up at least once, no fail, every class. That issue? Vampires. 

The YA world is crawling with vampires. They are everywhere, and appear in a variety of  forms, from sparkly century-old teenagers to hungry undead villagers in Easter Europe. They'll suck your blood and steal your heart and leave you looking for another novel. 

You'll find him in the YA section of your public library

There's no denying that the current trend in vamp fiction owes a lot to a certain now ubiquitous, highly popular series that has just been made into a ubiquitous and highly popular movie franchise. I read Twilight and New Moon for this project, and for my own interest, because I wanted to know what it was all about. 

For comparison, I also read two other vampire novels: one that was written pre-Twilight  but has several similarities (Look for Me by Moonlight by Mary Downing Hahn, 1997), and one that is a contemporary of Twilight, and an altogether different kind of vampire novel (My Sword Hand is Singing by Marcus Sedgwick, 2007).

So the next three posts are going to be part of a Vampire Spectacular, to give you an idea of what has happened, and what is currently happening, in the crypts of YA fiction today.