Review of "Hopes and Screams," written by Heather Nuhfer

Review of

Hopes and Screams, written by Heather Nuhfer ISBN 9780316254335


Four out of five stars

 The premise of this graphic novel is a high school that is aptly named, Monster High. The students are all creatures from the horror movie genre. There is a male Medusa with snakes for hair, vampires and other human/animals with fangs and zombies. All act as you would expect high school teens to act, even though they do not have human bodies, they possess the emotions.

 The stories are an exercise in puns and wordplay. There is the casketball team, Home Ick class, Draculaura, “it looks fangtastic,” and the school paper “Gory Gazette.” I found myself spending as much time in identifying the puns as I did in following the story, which is fairly shallow anyway.

 This is a story targeted at the early teen reader and it lands precisely in that zone. Nothing heavy, all light and (h)airy.