by @Jackalope, curator of HOWLS book club nominees for August’s “Back to School” category
For many of us, August means it’s back to school. It’s that time of year that teachers and students circle a date in big red marker on their calendars: some in dread, some in anticipation. College campuses come out of their summer hibernation. But this year, something worse is waking up…
Whisper Down the Lane by Clay Chapman
Inspired by the McMartin preschool trials and the Satanic Panic of the ‘80s, the critically acclaimed author of The Remaking delivers another pulse pounding, true-crime-based horror novel.
– Goodreads
This book alternates between the perspectives of a boy in a 1980s elementary school Satanic Panic, and a modern-day art teacher who might know more than he lets on about what happened. I’m excited about the twin narratives showing us how false accusations can spiral, particularly when they involve children.
Bookshop* | Goodreads | Amazon
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it.
– Goodreads
This idyllic boarding school hides the real world from its students. What’s the world like outside the school? The book is billed as dystopian sci fi, which is intriguing from the description.
Bookshop* | Goodreads | Amazon
Fuckness by Andersen Prunty
This darkly offbeat novel opens with the narrator, Wallace Black, as the target of the school bully’s violence. After suffering a horrendous beating, Black goes home to his equally abusive family. As a punishment for fighting at school, his mother straps a set of grotesque horns to the top of his head. He is unsure of where the horns came from. They have always been in the house. And they contain a power no one could have expected.
– Goodreads
The setting of this book is a few miles from my hometown–the land of Gummo and Super 8–and its described as a “a sometimes hilarious, sometimes violent and terrifying coming-of-age Midwestern gothic novel.”
Bookshop* | Goodreads | Amazon
The Fever by Megan Abbott
In this impossible-to-put-down “panic attack of a novel,” a small-town high school becomes the breeding ground for a mysterious illness. As rumors of a hazardous outbreak spread through school, and hysteria and contagion swell, a series of tightly held secrets emerges, threatening to unravel friendships, families, and the town’s fragile sense of security.
– Goodreads
The book is Mean Girls on steroids. One review from Emily May said “My first thought was to compare Abbott’s depiction of teenage girl politics to Lord of the Flies.”
Bookshop* | Goodreads | Amazon
The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey
Melanie is a very special girl. Dr. Caldwell calls her “our little genius.” Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. Melanie loves school. She tells her favorite teacher all the things she’ll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn’t know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad.
– Goodreads
It’s no secret that this book involves zombies in some way. I got Firestarter vibes from it as well– the girl is raised in a lab, essentially. Children need school no matter their circumstances, and these sound like some real circumstances.
Bookshop* | Goodreads | Amazon
Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville. In this new nation, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Reeducation Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead. But there are also opportunities—and Jane is studying to become an Attendant.
– Goodreads
A Black author’s take on a zombie Civil War? Heck yeah! Jane is being trained to fight zombies but turns out her real enemy is something even more dangerous.
Bookshop* | Goodreads | Amazon
Apt Pupil by Stephen King
Todd Bowden is an apt pupil. Good grades, good family, a paper route. But he is about to meet a different kind of teacher: Mr. Dussander. Todd knows all about Dussander’s dark past. The torture. The death. The decades-old manhunt Dussander has escaped to this day. Yet Todd doesn’t want to turn him in. Todd wants to know more. Much more. He is about to learn the real meaning of power—and the seductive lure of evil.
– Goodreads
What if your teacher is actually a terrible person, and you’re a lost teenager who wants to learn his ways? In this book, Todd learns a lot of lessons the curriculum board would not approve.
Bookshop* | Goodreads | Amazon
And The Winner Is…
Out of these seven books, HOWLers voted to read Whisper Down the Lane by Clay Chapman. Join HOWL Society on Monday, August 9, 2021 to begin discussion!
Julie Sevens is a horror writer and a copy editor who has been a teacher in many circumstances: movie sets, foreign-language playgroups, summer camps, museums, and more formally in Philadelphia. She also has a second-grader at home who is counting down the days until back to school. Find out more at juliesevens.com.
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