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If you have horror fans in your library then SJ Wills’ Bite Risk series probably flies off the shelves.

The three books in the series – Bite Risk, Caught Dead and Cold Blood – keep readers up to date with the supernaturally dangerous goings on of Tremorglade.

SJ Wills very kindly wrote for us about the privilege she feels writing to keep young teens engaged in reading…

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I was thirteen when a novel first really blew my mind. It was The White Mountains by John Christopher, the book that begins the Tripods trilogy. Set in a future England where great three-legged monsters have taken control of the population with mind-controlling caps, it was different from anything I’d previously read. Before then, there had been endless Nancy Drews and Mallory Towers. That thrilling sci-fi masterpiece hit me at a perfect moment – when my developing brain was ready to encounter more complex plots, bigger concepts, scarier scenes.

It’s a huge privilege to write for young teens. Everything is changing for them – the way adults interact with them, their freedom to move around, their confidence and understanding of themselves. They are at their most open, their most curious, their funniest, their most enthusiastic, their most boundary-testing. When they read, and when they talk about what they read, you can almost see their minds filling and expanding. They’re hungry for excitement, horror, emotion, wild and outrageous ideas, nuance and subtlety, and all the variety of experience that life can offer. They start to see possibilities. It’s a time of firsts. They’re looking through an open door into the adult world, but not yet stepping outside.

Often in schools, particularly in year 7, children will tell me Bite Risk is the first book they’ve ever read in the thriller/horror genre, and they want to find more. It’s also very noticeable how many of them relish a little gore – something else that is often new to them. We all know what it’s like to feel fear and disgust – the bread and butter of horror – and around this age children are ready to explore it further in the safety of books.

Some studies have found that horror fans report feeling more resilient than those who avoid reading or watching it. The theory is that it’s good for us to use our imaginations to put ourselves in peril and rehearse our responses, and so our brains make it fun, giving us a little dopamine hit, encouraging us to keep doing it. There’s a fine line between fear and excitement, and treading that line is energising, strengthening. For children, who can often feel powerless, experiencing that in stories can be revelatory.

I was an incredibly shy and risk-averse teenager – yet in books I devoured the most terrifying and exciting stories I could find. I wanted to know what it would feel like to be in the kind of danger I’d never want to get into in real life. I’m convinced that kind of reading did make me braver. And it ultimately led me to become a writer.

Many articles have been written about the big drop-off in reading around the transition to secondary school, with a variety of thoughts on why this might be happening. Social media and phones come in for a lot of the blame. There are claims that they’re destroying children’s ability to pay attention to anything for long. But the fact is that 11- to 15-year-olds are at the perfect age to fall in love with reading, if they are only given the opportunity, a wide choice, and encouragement to immerse themselves in story worlds. It becomes a welcome escape from scrolling. All it takes is one spark, one hook, one story that draws them in. This is where school librarians and teachers make an enormous difference. It’s their expertise that can enable a child to find that book that will blow their mind and begin their reading journey. Who knows where it might lead?