Holiday Book a Day: Day One

As I've shared, this holiday break I've challenged myself to read a book each day as part of a Twitter movement amongst teachers and readers.  This movement can be found under the #bookaday hashtag.  As such, I'll be posting out daily reflections, both to share some info about the book I'm reading and to model how to respond deeply about the novels we are reading.


I know I've mentioned that I had been reading this book, but as I finished the last two hundred pages last night and since yesterday was an actual school day I'm counting it as my first official #bookaday.  Also, you might like this book.  It has some really intense and gory descriptions (I wouldn't recommend eating while reading), has a cool story and a boatload of interesting characters.  One thing to consider, though, is that even though it is a young adult novel it does contain some pretty sophisticated vocabulary.  There were words even your humble teacher had to look up or get by with mere context clues.  It was worth it though.  Great read.  And I think it is the start of a series, so you might be making an investment for the long haul.  Okay, enough about that.  Here's my response to the novel (which clocks in at 246 words, which is in the ballpark of what I'm asking you to write (between 200-300 words):


The Monstrumologist, Rick Yancey
Pages 201-436

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One of the things I really loved about The Monstrumologist was the way the author played with the concept of "monster."  It seems like he was trying to get the reader to question what constitutes a monster.  The actual monsters in the book, the anthropophagi, are mythological headless human eaters rumored to have existed in Africa.  These creatures can leap forty feet in a single jump, rip a human limb from limb, suck out the human's brain matter, and pick his teeth with the bones of the victim.  They are monstrous.

What's interesting is that a character in the novel, a monster hunter named Jack Kearns, questions everyone's characterization of these creatures as monsters.  He says they are simply following their biological imperative;  eat and survive.  In fact, many of the humans in the novel are more monstrous than the anthropophagi because humans have been endowed with free will and a moral code and still perform horrific acts.  One character is left bedridden for decades while maggots devour his body.  Hundreds of people are thrown into pits to be devoured by the anthropophagi.  Kearns himself, who the narrator hints might be Jack the Ripper, makes numerous monstrous decisions, at one point chaining a street woman to a stake and gutting her to be used as bait to attract the anthropophagi to their slaughter.
Wil Henry, our protagonist, is shown all these different versions of monstrous and left to decide what it is that makes us human.