My students love a good scare, but are too scared of the challenge of reading. I teach 10th grade English in an inner-city school in Texas, where the majority of the student body live well below the poverty line and the English department lacks the funds to replace worn-out and out-dated paperbacks.

Most of my students have never read an entire book in class, let alone at home alone. Yet one day I stumbled upon an interest we all shared: Horror (zombies, in particular). I began describing a favorite book of mine, and my kids were salivating to read it for themselves, clamoring to borrow my personal copy, and adding their name to the ever-growing waiting list. Buying one copy for myself is not a problem (nor are the replacement copies for when the original falls apart from continued usage), but I would love to have a class set of the novel so that we can read it and discuss it together.

We need 30 copies of World War Z by Max Brooks. Having a class set of the novel opens incredible doors for my students. While they struggle through "canonical" books like "Animal Farm" and "Lord of the Flies," my students can't get enough of "World War Z." It has opened their eyes to a world they've ignored (or been barred from) for a very long time. I am eager to implement an entire unit around the novel, focusing not only on the incredible literary value of the novel, but expanding it beyond the pages to apply directly to their lives. The novel is not simply about zombies running a-muck. The book speaks about the innate human capacity to survive, to overcome adversity, and to meet difficulties head on. Though my kids will (hopefully) never experience the threat of extermination at the hands of zombies, they will all face their own "personal zombies." What they do in those situations is what proves their true worth.

Your help will ensure that my students not only experience the pleasure of reading for reading's sake, but also open their eyes to a world of books beyond "dead white guys in wigs" (as one of my students is fond of saying). If I can hook students in my class onto reading, there is a ripple effect, where that joy is spread to friends and family, and hopefully more people in my students' lives begin to pick up books. If a student learns that reading can be fun, and not the torturous experience he has come to expect, he is more likely to pick up a book of his own volition, raising his not only his vocabulary and reading comprehension, but chances that he will succeed in any endeavor post high school. Not to mention the added bonus of now having the survival skills to survive the zombie apocalypse.