A Community of Blood

I was thrilled to see this in my recommendations tonight, misspelled though its title may be. The reason? I assist in editing this wonderful book series at Penguin. Now approaching the fourth book (Eleventh Grade Burns), the series is really taking off, and as you can see here, it's partly because young readers identify with the loner main character who is bullied and hiding a secret.



I'm guessing this was recommended because I watched a video from the author's own YouTube channel, which she forwarded as a way of saying Happy Halloween. That's a pretty oblique connection, though, since she's only uploaded that one video and it has nothing to do with Vlad Tod. Maybe it's because I've been listening to songs from the New Moon soundtrack, and YouTube figured (as readers sometimes do) that one vampire equals another.

As for my thoughts on the video...well, it's just a wee bit campy. The voice-over voice is hilarious, the punch that never connects is to die for, and the "epic" running through the halls rewards slow-mo replays ad infinitum. If you're wondering why that boy throws down his hostess cupcake in disgust, it's because he stole it from Vlad, who sneaks blood capsules into his sack lunches to avoid going hungry at school.

But I'm being a little unfair. This is a school project, after all, and when you consider how video editing has progressed since when I was in high school, it's relatively impressive. I like to imagine that the maker of this video is himself a loner - maybe he's bullied at school, and maybe he wishes he were a vampire. Well, that's not likely to happen, but at least he has the books for support, and at least now thirteen hundred people have watched his school video project thanks to a diverse internet community.

The cold-hearted editor in me is glad to see that other kids commented to tell him where he got the plot details wrong. Probably not the supportive reception he was looking for, but again, this video is about progress, not perfection.