Werewolves, Vampires, and Middle Grade’s Unspoken Promise, a guest post by Christine Virnig

Considering that the setting for my debut middle grade novel, A Bite Above the Rest, is a tourist town that’s Halloween 24/7—a place where Halloween decorations stay up year-round, where people wear costumes Every Single Day, and where the stores sport names like Ghoulish Gifts and Monster’s Munchies and Vampire Bat Books—one might assume that I’d loved Halloween as a kid.

Boy, would that assumption be wrong.

Apart from the candy part (which I did love), Halloween was not for me.

Halloween meant awkwardly knocking on strangers’ doors, begging for treats. It meant bitingly cold weather and Halloween parties I wasn’t invited to. It meant carving pumpkins, an activity that always started out fun and then quickly turned to disappointment when my well-planned-out designs didn’t turn out the way I’d envisioned. And worst of all, Halloween meant costumes. Oh, how I hated the costumes.

Every year my mom would pull out her sewing machine and fashion an amazing outfit for me and my siblings. I should have been thrilled… but I wasn’t. As an anxious, overweight, and severely self-conscious kid, I did not want a fabulous, unique, one-of-a-kind costume.

I wanted to blend in.

Given my less-than-amicable relationship with Halloween, if my parents had moved me to Samhain, Wisconsin—the fictional town in which A Bite Above the Rest takes place—I would undoubtedly have melted into a puddle of fear and worry. And yet I made my main character, Caleb, an 11-year-old boy who’s just as anxious and insecure and overweight as I was at his age, move there.

Mean, right?

And that wasn’t all. I then went and made the poor kid suspect that his new hometown was nothing but a smokescreen. That mixed in with all the silly costumed humans there were actual vampires and actual witches and actual werewolves strolling about as well. Hiding in plain sight.

On the surface, it might seem like kid-me would have hated my book. But at the risk of sounding a bit braggy, I think I’d have liked it.

For one thing, the simple fact that there was a plus-sized kid being painted as anything other than a bully or class clown would have left me totally dazed, in a good way. In the books I was reading, it was always the skinny kid who got to be the hero.

And second, I would have related to Caleb’s fears and insecurities right away. Watching him struggle to find his bravery would have really hit home.

And finally… as much as I disliked Halloween and the costumes and the bitter cold, and as much as I would have Pooped My Pants if I thought there was even the slightest chance that my English teacher could have been a real live werewolf, I’m pretty sure I would have loved to read about Caleb facing all these terrors while I, myself, was safely curled up in my nice, warm bed.

And really, I think that’s the best thing about middle grade books: They give kids a safe way to escape their own lives—whether those lives are relatively easy, or filled with struggles, or full of horrors—and explore a whole new world. A world that might be very similar to their own, or very different. A world where they might see themself reflected in the people living there, or where they may discover new people, new cultures, and new ideas.

Because of this wonderful offer of escape, middle-grade books are often thought of as “fluffy.” Of skirting around the dark realities of life to focus on the fantastical and whimsical instead. But I think this generalization is grossly unfair. Sure, middle grade books tend to be nurturing and supportive and fun, but they also deal with really big issues all the time—issues like loss and heartbreak and prejudice and injustice. In A Bite Above the Rest, for example, Caleb simultaneously needs to acclimate to life in a new town, deal with a bully, investigate the existence of MONSTERS, and struggle to come to terms with the death of his father. It’s a lot.

In many ways, us middle grade authors are rather tough on our main characters. We make them struggle. We make them doubt themselves. We allow sad things to happen (Bridge to Terabithia, anyone?!?). And just like in real life, we don’t always let our characters get what they want in the end. But there is one unspoken, unwritten promise-to-the-reader that every middle-grade author I know sticks to as fiercely as Shaggy sticks to Scooby-Doo: Everything will be okay.

Our heroes will survive to live another day, and even if the road is rocky, and even if their world doesn’t end up all rainbows and unicorns and Skittles, at a minimum the downpour will end, the sun will come out, and they will be left with that powerful thing called HOPE.

It’s this promise-to-the-reader that would have made Halloween-hating kid-me feel comfortable escaping into a book like A Bite Above the Rest in the first place. Because even if parts of it would undoubtedly have Terrified the Snot out of me, in the end I’d know that Caleb and I would get through it.

Together.

And that everything would be okay. 

Meet the author

Christine Virnig is a fan of books, candy, spooky stories, poop jokes, and coffee…in no particular order. As a former physician, Christine now spends her days writing books, reading books, and working at a library where she is surrounded by books. Christine lives in southern Wisconsin with her husband, two daughters, a ridiculous number of dust bunnies, and one incredibly lazy cat. You can visit her on the web at ChristineVirnig.com.

Here is the book’s purchase link.

About A Bite Above the Rest

A boy moves to a Halloween-themed town only to realize there may be more to the tourist trap than meets the eye in this fast-paced romp of a middle grade novel perfect for fans of The Last Kids on Earth and Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library!

When Caleb’s mom decides they are moving to her childhood home in Wisconsin, Caleb is not thrilled. Moving schools, states, and time zones would be bad enough, but Mom’s hometown is Samhain, a small and ridiculously kitschy place where every day is Halloween.

Caleb is not a fan of Halloween when it only happens once a year, so Halloween-obsessed Samhain is really not the place for him. How is he supposed to cope with kids wearing costumes to school every single day? And how about the fact that the mayor is so committed to the bit that City Hall is only open from sundown to sunup to accommodate his so-called vampirism? Sure enough, Caleb becomes an outcast at school for refusing to play along with the spooky tradition like the other sixth graders. Luckily, he manages to find a friend in fellow misfit Tai, and just in time, because things are getting weird in Samhain…or make that weirder.

But there’s no way the mayor is an actual vampire, and their teacher absolutely cannot really be a werewolf—right? Caleb discovers Samhain is so much stranger than he ever could have imagined. As one of the only people who realizes what’s happening, can he save a town that doesn’t want saving?

ISBN-13: 9781665946575
Publisher: Aladdin
Publication date: 08/06/2024
Age Range: 8 – 12 Years

Filed under: Guest Post