The Zombie Chasers

April 15, 2010
Grades 4-6 The two-page illustration that opens this macabre madcap sums it up: a cityscape crowded with roughly 30 people, all of whom would be kind of cute if they werent leaking brains, gushing blood, and dropping appendages. What makes this latest entry into the developing middle-grade zombie canon stand out is Kloepfers gleeful insistence on goreintestines slop, flesh liquefies, and one character collects severed fingers in a baggie. The plot itself is perfunctory. After a sudden zombie apocalypse hits Phoenix, seventh-grader Zack, fashion-plate Madison, and best-buddy Rice navigate the hungry hoards with makeshift weapons, lots of name-brand products, and plenty of snark, calling one another loser, dork, and freakazoid at every opportunity. Its Wolfhards squiggly drawings, appearing on nearly every page, that really bring the laughs (and the gagging), especially his gruesome chapter numbers. Along the way, the makeshift monster squad comes up with both cause and cure for the virus, as well as a reason to stick around for the next vomitous volume.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2010
The night starts off badly for Zack: he's wrapped in duct tape, made up like a girl, and filmed for the Internet. And it only gets worse from there: fast-food eaters turned zombies are taking over, lurching, smashing, and biting their way around town. This fast-moving undead adventure will delight readers. Goofy, gory drawings, including zombie-shaped chapter numbers, add to the horror-hilarity.

(Copyright 2010 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

June 1, 2010

Except for an overly quiet neighborhood, all seems normal to Zack Clarke. He spent the afternoon polishing the middle school's floor in detention. He's returning home to one of his evil older sister Zoe's slumber parties. When he gets there, she and her evil-er friends kidnap him and give him a hostage makeover while videotaping it for YouTube. Then the zombies attack! Zack, his best friend, chubby, geeky Rice, and vegan Madison (one of his sister's friends) are the only survivors, and they must try to make it to the Tucson Air Force Base. Easier said than done in a town full of fast-food–created, shambling, hungry undead. Rice thinks he has the cure, but they have to survive the trip...with zombified Zoe, a yappy puppy and lunk-headed Greg (Madison's boyfriend) in tow. Kloepfer's first is a Zombieland for the middle-school set: funny, off-color and extremely gross. Wolfhard's cartoon line drawings might inspire nightmares, so this and the obviously on-the-way sequel are not for the squeamish. A great pick for the child who thought Diary of a Wimpy Kid just needed more motile corpses. (Funny horror. 8-12)

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2010

Gr 5-7-Seventh-grader Zack Clarke's suburban Phoenix neighborhood seems normal-until almost everyone mysteriously transforms into a zombie. Zack, his geeky friend Rice, and his eighth-grade sister Zoe's glamorous but snarky friend Madison are seemingly the only ones unaffected. That means that all the zombies in the neighborhood-including Zoe-are determined to devour them. They need to defend themselves but can only find a plastic baseball bat and a fire extinguisher. Meanwhile, Zack and Zoe's parents are at a parent-teacher night at their school-do they even know what's going on? This first volume in a new series leaves readers hanging at the end, but it's a quick, fun read, loaded with jokes and middle-school sarcasm. Kloepfer's descriptions of the zombies and their feeding habits, and Wolfhard's cartoon characters with guts and drool hanging out, are not for the faint of heart (or weak of stomach).-Walter Minkel, Austin Public Library, TX

Copyright 2010 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.