Animals and Vampires

In the four years I've been working in children's publishing I've seen a lot of story trends come and quickly fade away. But some, for better or worse, stick around forever. My favorite trends are animal trends. Maybe it's my fondness for Charlotte's Web, Ribsy, Ralph S. Mouse and the awesome Stuart Little. Since working at Harper I've been able to watch my own younger cousins get into Warrior Cats and then fall out, only for their younger brothers and sister to pick it up—it makes my day! (Not to mention a huge part of my job.) And that makes me a happy employee and elder cousin. There's a lot of cool content in those books and lord knows I'm a sucker for an adventure series.

Unfortunately an all too real trend and epidemic will not go away. The unfortunate Supernatural-as-a-love-story trend. I'm ok with this in the sense that I don't care what anyone reads, as long as it's happening. But I do care in the sense that after a while non scary vampires and stuff is boring. So this little ditty from overheard really made me giggle:

I can almost guarantee The Velveteen Rabid Rabbit is in the works. Or maybe The Velveteen Rabbit and Pet Cemetery. I don't know, whatever would go with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Which reminds me—I have to read that still!