ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — When the publisher Quirk Books was looking to launch a series about supernatural phenomena for kids in the middle grades, writer Insha Fitzpatrick immediately knew she wanted in.
A lifelong horror fan, Fitzpatrick penned the first book in the “Totally Factual Field Guide to the Supernatural” series, released on March 28. The book, “Hanging With Vampires,” dives into the lore and history of bloodsuckers in ways in which children between the ages of eight and 12 can get on board. “A lot of people don’t know where this history comes from,” Fitzpatrick said in a phone interview with the Record-Transcript. “So the book is saying, ‘Hey kids, this is what this is and you’re welcome to join us and learn about it.’”
The genre is one that the Orange resident grew up loving. She’s no stranger to scary movies that feature vampires, werewolves and any other of their mythical brethren. Fitzpatrick also loves research, so spending all day reading and writing about vampires was a dream job.
“I grew up loving horror and supernatural stuff,” Fitzpatrick said. “I didn’t have to be scared of anything in real life, because the scary stuff was always worse in movies. I knew it wouldn’t really happen.”
Jumping headfirst into what, on the surface, could be an eerie topic for young readers is what she believes removes some of the creepiness factor. Introducing the history of vampires makes them inherently less intimidating.
“In a lot of kids’ minds, they’re real,” Fitzpatrick said about vampires. “I wanted to be able to tell people about them and have them slowly move into not being scared. Because it’s not that scary when you know everything about it.”
Vampire lore stretches all the way back to the middle ages beginning with Vlad the Impaler, a Romanian ruler in the 1400s known as “the real Dracula.” Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula” is the earliest and most widely known vampire literature, but Fitzpatrick said there are a lot of other influences that coalesce to form the modern-day version of the monster.
“A lot of vampire lore comes from places in mythology and history that we never connect together, even with creatures like the chupacabra, which is very vampiric” she said, referring to the urban legend reptilian creature that sucks the blood of animals and has had been allegedly spotted periodically in Puerto Rico since the 1970s.
“That combination gets us to where we are now. It’s interesting to see where we get all of this, and that was the fun part of the research.”
Though they’ve always been in the ether, vampires saw an explosion of popularity in pop culture in the late 2000s and early 2010s, especially in young adult literature. The “Twilight” series, which spawned four books from 2005 through 2008 and five movie adaptations shortly after, is the most notable.
“We had a few things before ‘Twilight,’ like ‘Blue Bloods’ and ‘True Blood,’” Fitzpatrick said, mentioning another young adult book series and the adult series turned HBO TV show.
“I think it came from some need for the supernatural to rise from the dead in storytelling. You can do it with ghosts, but vampires are more mysterious and alluring. That got quadrupled with ‘Twilight.’ There are a lot of problematic things there that we gloss over, but it was this need for us to read about a mysterious creature and see what will happen to the girl.”
But that’s not what “Hanging with Vampires” is about. Fitzpatrick’s book wants to satisfy the curiosity that young children often have about weird or scary topics, and she didn’t shy away from the weird. In fact, her editor had to ask her to pull back a bit.
“I love the gory stuff, and when I would be going over it with my editor she would say, ‘Not this,’” Fitzpatrick joked. “We compromised on getting the icky stuff that kids like in there, so it’s just gory enough.”
The point, after all, is to learn. Fitzpatrick is a former library assistant at the Millburn Public Library, and spent six months working in the MPL’s children’s department. It turned out to be a good primer for writing a children’s book, because she had a front row seat to see what children want to or don’t want to read.
“This age is right in that sweet spot of figuring out what they’re into and who they are,” Fitzpatrick said. “It was fun to see how open-minded most kids are. The book steers kids in the direction of, if you want to know more, ask someone. Go to your local library or a bookstore and find more on the topic, even ask me. We want them to find out what they want to learn.”
This is the fourth book for Fitzpatrick, who previously wrote “Oh My Gods” and “Oh My Gods II”: “The Forgotten Maze” with Stephanie Cooke and Juliana Moon and “Who Sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott? Rosa Parks” for the Who Was graphic novel line.
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