Nie: I vant to read these books!

Grab your flashlight and pull the covers up tight. Not all summertime reading happens in the bright glare of the summer sun. Today we'll introduce you to two books in a vampire series sure to keep you reading late into the night, if you dare!

Reader profile

If you are a girl ages 12 to 16 who loves a book she can really sink her teeth into and your favorite food is steak - very, very rare of course . . .

Then "Hot Reads for a Cool Summer" recommends: Amelia Atwater-Rhodes' In the Forests of the Night, Demon in My View and Midnight Predator.

Life as a teenager in 1684 was going pretty well for Rachel Weatere until she had what I guess you could call a really bad day: She was turned into a vampire. Three hundred years later Rachel, now Risika her vampire name sleeps by day in Concord, Mass., and roams the streets of New York City by night, feeding her appetite for fresh blood. Hey, that's what you do if you're a vampire, right? One of the coolest things about In the Forests of the Night is that the author was 13 when she wrote it. Two years later she followed with Demon in My View. (To learn more about the author, read the interview on www.teenreads.com)

Reader profile

If you are a boy age 10 or older whose dream pet is a tarantula and you think that lurking around as one of the "undead" might just be better than, say, math class. . .

Then "Hot Reads for a Cool Summer" recommends: Cirque du Freak: A Living Nightmare by Darren Shan and other titles in the Cirque series, The Vampire's Assistant, Tunnels of Blood, Vampire Mountain, Trials of Death and The Vampire Prince (coming in September).

If big, black, hairy spiders "bug" you, then forget about reading Cirque Du Freak: A Living Nightmare - an all too realistic sketch of one stares at you on the first page of each new chapter. Still interested? How do you feel about freak shows and teenage vampires? Right. This is definitely your series. Let's turn the creepiness factor up just one more notch and talk about the fact that the author of this book, Darren Shan, is also the main character in the story. Or is it a page from real life? Read the books and decide for yourself. Check out the author's Web site www.darrenshan.com.

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Had enough vampires? Buffy to the rescue. Fans of the popular TV series won't be disappointed in the collection of short stories found in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales of the Slayer Vol. 1 and 2.

- Holly Atkins, a national board certified teacher, loves to read and write. She is a teacher at Southside Fundamental Middle School in St. Petersburg and has been an instructor at the Poynter Institute's Writers' Camp. She was the author of the past two Newspaper in Education series, The Wonders of Florida and Reading Matters. You can e-mail your comments to her at hollysatkins@yahoo.com

[Last modified July 11, 2003, 14:25:06]

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