Welcome to the second Weekend Picks of July, brought to us by Daniel Summers, former high school teacher and current high school librarian in Morgantown, West Virginia.
 Daniel Levi Summers | Daniel Summers is a high school Librarian and Coordinator of Student Assistance/Section 504 Compliance at University High School in Morgantown, WV. He has been an educator in various disciplines for over twelve years. He is an active member of the National Writing Project at WVU and a part-time poet. He can be contacted at [email protected] |
I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones
Tolly Driver is your average teenage boy growing up in the late eighties in rural Texas. Well, until he becomes possessed by a serial killer and gains superhuman powers and a desire to murder relentlessly.
 | It is a rare book that can settle into a space filled with tropes, place, and specific time--and yet hold resonance to almost any audience. While reading Jones’ love letter to the slasher genre I was also in the mind of a teenager haunted by loss and isolation--so the human condition. I Was a Teenage Slasher somehow manages to be brutal and, at times gory, while keeping the young adult reader in the realm of unconditional never flinching friendship, finding identity, and dealing with forces they barely understand. I grew up with the classic horror/slasher genre as background noise in the living room. It seemed like there were only three sounds fit for the Zenith Console CRT television: John Wayne eating corn dodgers, Elvis Presley kissing his cousins, and Jason Voorhees chanting “ch-ch-ch--ma-ma-ma.” 1989 was a strange and romantic time to be a child, but I’d argue so is 2025. |
Tolly becomes a brutal serial killer, and yet, you find yourself rooting for him--hoping he finds a path to redemption. Like Poe before him, Jones creates a haunted figure who you can’t trust, and yet cannot get out of your head because his torments are somehow your own. But instead of a gothic aesthetic, the world of Teenage Slasher is a self-aware commentary on the slasher genre and the things we fear in our everyday lives. Young adults who read this book will likely see the darkness of not being in control of a world that ignores them and seemingly dissolves away from the dreams they were promised as children.
| Do not misunderstand, just as this book about a serial murderer isn’t scary--dare I say it is heartfelt, and perhaps humorous--it is not a sad book. It is about hope and finding oneself in the muck of a busy changing world where, ultimately everyone, including ourselves get lost sometimes. This is a fun book with some real depth. Any fan of the slasher genre owes this book to themselves, and non-fans will still find themselves thinking about Tolly Driver months after they put the book down. |  Stephen Graham Jones |
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