As a children’s librarian working in an inner-city library, it is always a pleasure to come across new urban titles, especially when a unique approach is provided for our teen readers. Adrian Harper’s Night Biters is an action-packed horror novel in which urban teens, whose days are spent participating in graffiti, skateboarding, and hip-hop fashion, come face-to-face with vampiric forces in the city of Oakland. Harper uses street culture as a setting, rather than a centralized plot or motif, which further validates the positive aspects of hip-hop culture as something common and unproblematic. Still issues of violence are present between various gang groups of Hispanics, African Americans, and white power bikers, but the realistic violence is intermingled with supernatural phenomena.

The novel is self-published through what is known as the “vanity press,” and the book does suffer from misspellings, unfocused writing, and several cut-off sentences. Teens might be interested in purchasing the novel at their own leisure, but the likelihood of a vanity novel being approved for aquisitions is quite low. However, Harper has embarked on something we need more of in teen fiction - novels about African Americans and hip-hop culture where ethnicity is not the central plight. We hope to see more of Adrian’s future work as his writing matures and he continues to fill the holes in teen fiction. Perhaps the sequal, The Rave of Werewolves, will be suitable for a small press publisher?

Harper has a blog, where he writes about reaching urban male readers. We (librarians) are fighting for the same cause as you, Mr. Harper! Please drop a comment or two on Adrian Harper’s blog and let him know what you think about his approach.

Extras, Extras, Read all about it:

• Adrian Harper’s MySpace
• Adrian Harper’s Blog
• Night Biters Web site