Class Act- Module 8: VAMPIRES AND BEYOND (WEREWOLVES, ZOMBIES, MERMAIDS, ETC

Shutter by Courtney Alameda

Published by: Feiwel & Friends

Book Summary:     

     Micheline Helsing is a tetrachromat—a girl who sees the auras of the undead in a prismatic spectrum. As one of the last descendants of the Van Helsing lineage, she has trained since childhood to destroy monsters both corporeal and spiritual: the corporeal undead go down by the bullet, the spiritual undead by the lens. With an analog SLR camera as her best weapon, Micheline exorcises ghosts by capturing their spiritual energy on film. She’s aided by her crew: Oliver, a techno-whiz and the boy who developed her camera’s technology; Jude, who can predict death; and Ryder, the boy Micheline has known and loved forever.
     When a routine ghost hunt goes awry, Micheline and the boys are infected with a curse known as a soulchain. As the ghostly chains spread through their bodies, Micheline learns that if she doesn’t exorcise her entity in seven days or less, she and her friends will die. Now pursued as a renegade agent by her monster-hunting father, Leonard Helsing, she must track and destroy an entity more powerful than anything she’s faced before . . . or die trying.
     Lock, stock, and lens, she’s in for one hell of a week.

     I’ve never been into zombies. Ever. And then The Walking Dead came out. At first I wasn’t a fan of that either because it was too graphic for me and caused me nightmares. But then I read it and then went to watch it and it was so much better for me. I’m not sure why, but it just worked. Since then I have been trying to find other zombie books to read. It’s been pretty hard to not pick some cheesy ones, so I went through the history of them. 

     The first zombie novel that introduced them to the West was The Magical Island by William Seabrook. It shows some voodoo from whence zombies had come from. It seems to be the most influential book so far about zombies and their origin. 

     Another early book about zombies is Frankenstein. This one is interesting because the zombie becomes the “undead” because of a scientist, but still he is a form of a zombie. I thought this was pretty cool because I’ve never thought of it that way before. 

     In the 90’s zombies emerged as a ‘real” sub-genre. The collection of stories in this book make this book the first real collection of “zombie literature.” 

     In the 21st century zombies continued to grow. Other books like mashups of Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies began to pop up, as well as some Young Adult books. 

     In all the zombie books I’ve seen so far, the plot is almost always the same. There’s an outbreak and then there is one hunter that goes after them that are better than others. Some other troupes include, Revenants and Flesh Eating Zombies. It would be cool to see some that break the mold. 

 What are some of your favorite zombie books? 

Any of these that you’ve read and loved?