My Life as a White Trash Zombie[/caption]Angel Crawford is not what you would consider a sympathetic hero. She’s a drug addict who dropped out of high school to enter the real world but can’t even hold down a simple retail…
The challenge of translating a novel from another language is balancing the style and tone with the literal text. Lean too far towards literary flourish and you’re radically altering the content of the book. Stay too true to the literal…
I recently had the pleasure of chaperoning a group of advanced high school theater students to a production of Tony Kushner’s little seen play A Bright Room Called Day. I’ve known for years about the problematic text (and even saw…
How to Make Webcomics is not a book you’re going to pick up as a casual read. It’s a well-planned guidebook to all the big technical topics that come into play when you want to launch a webcomic. Brad Guigar…
The year is 1936. The location is a remote ski lodge in the Italian Alps, formerly the Austrian Alps. An entrepreneur is struggling to keep his hotel in business. Just when his manager tries to tell everyone to clock out…
Of all the comic compendiums/graphic novels I own, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director’s Cut by Jhonen Vasquez is easily the one I’ve read the most. I still have the first copy I picked up at a mall Hot Topic in…
How do you evaluate a book that fails to meet its structural conceit? This is a problem for anyone reviewing Ceridwen Dovey’s Blood Kin. Dovey wrote a book from three perspectives–the chef, the barber, and the portraitist of a dictator–about…
Corridor is a twisted science fiction novel for a YA audience. Troy wakes up in a blinding white room with the voice of a girl, Victoria, in his head. Victoria tells him he has to run in order to survive.…
I have a very strong love/hate relationship with the writing of Stephen King. When he is on point, it’s hard to find his equal in contemporary horror and horror criticism. When he’s off, he epitomizes the worst of horror cliches…
In the acknowledgments page of her YA novel Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins thanks her father for his efforts to find a way to teach children about the reality of war and peace. It is clear in the third book of The…
As much as it pains me to admit, sometimes, the common belief that a sequel can never be as good as the original is right. In the case of Suzanne Collins’ Catching Fire, the second book in The Hunger Games…
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is the first novel in a YA trilogy about a country that rises out of the ashes of America. Panem is divided into twelve districts and a capitol city. As punishment for an early…
Journey to the Center of the Earth is a science fiction/fantasy novel from 19th Century author Jules Verne. Our protagonist is Axel, the nephew of the acclaimed Professor Liedenbrock, who unwillingly breaks a code detailing directions to the center of…