Vampires: A Collection of Original Stories

13 vampire tales, selected by Jane Yolen, whose work I generally love.
However, some of the stories here were too juvenile for me (the book is aimed at 10-12 yr. olds), and some were rather weak. Still, there was some good stuff included.
Delia Sherman's "Blood Kin" was spooky in a classic way: an orphan girl in a mansion has two distant relatives (?) come to care for her... but not all seems right.
"The Magic-Stealer" by Josepha Sherman creates a vivid and believable world where a young girl must come into her magical power and protect her tribe from evil.
"Miss Emily's Roses" by Mary Frances Zambreno describes a little girl's friendship with the woman next door, which is thwarted by that woman's nasty sister - but things don't turn out show more quite as expected.
Yolen's own "Mama Gone" is bittersweet and touching.

Worth reading, for a vampire fan, but I finished with a hunger for some more adult-oriented stories. show less

I didn't enjoy this book one bit. It is horrifically dated. I didn't even have to look at the copyright date to know when it was compiled. Many of the stories were written like those horrible early nineties family sitcoms (Family Matters, Blossom, Step by Step, etc.). The teenage characters were written as though by someone who had only pop-culture knowledge of teenagers as opposed to first-person experience. The historical-fantasy fiction pieces were "ok", but not something I'd ever re-read. The Sci-Fi Fantasy future piece was pretty interesting, but tried to through too much of an "AU" world into too little a space.