Today was Community Reading Day in town and I read for my friend’s eighth grade homeroom. He suggested Seth Grahame-Smith’s incredible book, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. At first I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t. And it just so happens that I have my very own signed copy of this book. I am very  lucky, because my cousin is friends with Seth in LA and I shipped out my copy of Abe (and also my special edition of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with colored illustrations) out to California to have them signed!

Now, this book isn’t exactly a kids book, or even a YA book, and chances are there might be some people out there who would think I was crazy, but I think they really enjoyed the passages I read (yeah, a bit of gore in there.) One was of young Abe’s first kill and what goes through his mind. It was pretty intense – but the kids thought it was cool and I’m hoping they’ll at least be interested to visit the library where the teen librarian reads this kind of stuff 🙂

We also talked a bit about the library and banned books, which they seemed excited about too. So, all in all, a good day for Community Reading.

If you haven’t read either of these books, you need to. They are extremely well-written and are tough to put down. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is historical fact mixed seamlessly with vampire lore and it is amazingly easy to believe that there could be some truth to it (hey, it’s fun to think it COULD happen, right?) And I am a huge Jane Austen fan, and I’ve read Pride and Prejudice a few times, so I could appreciate the humor of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. This novel is also a seamless intertwining of Austen’s classic story with the fact that zombies exist. It works off of the original humor of the novel and takes it even further. Read them! You won’t regret it.