For those zombie enthusiasts who haven't already collected the other anthologies in which most of these were previously...
Another anthology shambles onto the zombie bandwagon.
This predominantly reprint collection sets a high bar for quality when it opens with Jonathan Mayberry's stellar "Family Business," which was rewritten as the opening of Rot & Ruin (2010). Starting an anthology with by far its best offering, sadly, makes all the other entries suffer in comparison. Despite the unflattering basis for comparison, there's plenty of solid brain-eating goodies here, from Kelly Link's tale of a boy who screws up exhuming his dead girlfriend to Nina Kiriki Hoffman's upsetting and sharply graphic tale of an abused and murdered teen prostitute looking for her own sort of closure. Scott Nicholson's "You'll Never Walk Alone" ruins a perfectly good zombie horror with its stereotypes of Appalachians as ignorant, racist hicks who can't decide if zombism is an "Aye-rab bug" or plague of sinners whose "souls are roasting under Hell." Other contributors successfully mine the gore and grotesquerie of undeath for Viking feminist empowerment tales (Christine Morgan), poignant stories of shambling love (Catherynne M. Valente), pirate adventures (Thomas S. Roche) or just gleefully gross thrills (Marie Atkins).
For those zombie enthusiasts who haven't already collected the other anthologies in which most of these were previously published . (Horror. 14 & up)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59780-312-0
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Night Shade
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2011
Two Rio Grande Valley high schoolers flirt with cutting out early but find reasons to finish school in this purposeful but intense tale. For Beto, it’s a combination of pride, disinterest in school and a clash with his caring but harsh father that sends him stalking away to spend the night in a Dumpster. For Beto's longtime friend Jessy, it’s a strong desire to be an artist, plus the strain of hearing her father beating her mother and knowing that her turn will be coming up one of these nights, that drives her to head for the bus to San Antonio. Using a mix of tenses and all three persons, Saldaña lays out his characters’ thoughts and emotional landscapes in broad strokes—creating a third angle of view by adding Beto’s little brother Roelito, who works his nalgas off in school but shows early signs of an ominous anger, as another narrative voice. The action takes place over the course of a little more than 12 hours, neatly capturing the spontaneity of teen impulses. Teen readers chafing at the domestic bit will find food for thought here. (Fiction. YA)
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-55885-607-3
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Arte Público
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
“Death is a period / at the end of a sentence,” concludes Annaleah, the 16-year-old protagonist of Schutz’s captivating fictional follow-up to her verse memoir (I Don’t Want To Be Crazy, 2006). And much like the resolute finality fixed in that tiny dot, Annaleah spends a great deal of this free-verse novel stuck contemplating the harsh reality that her sometime boyfriend, Brian—a seemingly healthy, dark-haired, cloudy-blue–eyed 17-year-old—has just dropped dead on the basketball court. Reeling from both physical loss and lack of closure to the meaning of their clandestine relationship, Annaleah finds herself routinely visiting and addressing the deceased Brian, until a chance graveside encounter yields advice that finally begins to hit home: “Nothing grows here,” says Brian’s grandmother, “besides grass.” At first blush appearing to pull out all the melodramatic stops in classic teen fashion, these refreshingly spare lines tackle tough relational issues—intimacy, risk, abandonment—with aplomb, making for a moving tale that also effectively shows teens how life can go on. (Fiction/poetry. 14 & up)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 970-0-545-16911-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PUSH/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
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