Meet the Stars of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Mass Market Paperback)

Six of the thirteen chapters focus on the "Buffster" herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, starting with her early career in commercials, getting to her Emmy award winning role as Kendall Hart on "All My Children" in the third chapter, and being cast as Buffy in chapter four. The other two chapters look at what Gellar does away from the set, where she explores her "Passion for Fashion," and her initial movie career as a scream queen in "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and "Scream 2." Getting their own chapters are Nicholas Brendon, Alyson Hannigan, David Boreanaz, Charisma Carpenter, and Seth Green. These basically read like interviews, culled together from other publications such as "Seventeen" and "Entertainment Weekly," but clear aimed for young readers (you will be reading along and suddenly a "Huddle alert" is called, so you know to pay attention because what follows is something you can gossip about with your friends). Chapter 12, "Camp 'Buffy': A Day Behind the Scenes," groups together stories about the cast on the set (and proves the book is unauthorized by not referring to the show by the Joss Whedon approved shorthand "BtVS"). The final chapter is filled with "Quick Bites on the Slayer Team" so that you can learn SMG loves anything vanilla along with standard biographical information and a long list of favorites from actors to whether or not they believe in vampires for her and the rest of the cast (including Head).

Gabriel tends to get a bit gushy at time throughout "Meet the Stars of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,'" but she does provide a lot of information. I was thinking that this was going to be one of those quick and dirty little books that comes out to take advantage of the hot television series du jour, but there is a lot of information about the young cast members of "BtVS." Gabriel must have read everything that was available in magazines from "Rolling Stone" to "YM" to put together this book, and since the vast majority of these magazines is not on my reading list, there was enough "new" information in this 165-page book to make it worth my while. If you spent the seven years that "BtVS" was on the air cutting out everything you could find about Sarah Michelle Gellar and the rest of the cast, then that might not be the case. But that should be easy enough to figure out going in to this paperback.