Zom-B: Whose the Bigger Monster??

Zom-B by Darren Shan

Why did I read it?

Shan has written a lot of books in this series, and one of the newest ones bounced across my desk this week. That and the short size of the book made me pick it up.

What happened?

Apparently, in a small town in Ireland, zombies attacked, condemning some to walk as the undead, and devouring the brains of others while they still lived.

But, B isn't necessarily convinced. Scared? Probably. In denial? Most likely. But, things at school will be the same (not worth much time), and things at home will be the same (a good thrashing for the smallest "supposed" infraction). 

So B keeps going on with life; terrorizing the younger classmates, joining Dad for some political meetings, and sleeping through lectures. But, B can't help but realize that there might be more truth than lies about the zombie thing, and that Dad's rantings might be more dangerous than B thought.

What did I like or not like?

As the title suggests, this book has some good, old-fashioned, bloody, gut-flying, scream-inducing zombie action. But, the build up to that point actually gets the majority of this first Zom-B installment.

Instead of focusing on the zombies, Shan focuses on what B realizes about hate, racism, bullying, and the monstrous side that has to be kept in check in all of us.

If blood and guts aren't your thing, than this probably isn't the book for you. But, Shan does a nice job of giving a fast-paced and exciting story that still has something to say.

Daybreak and Broxo: Some Zombie Stories

Daybreak by Brian Ralph and Broxo by Zack Giallongo

Why did I read it?

Daybreak: I referenced this book in my Teen Literature class for my Master's in Information and Library Science.
Broxo: It was an advanced reader copy that looked interesting.

What happened?

Daybreak: Your eyes snap open and you see a one-armed man walking toward you. He mentions that you don't want to be out in the open when night falls, so you follow him. After grabbing some food and meeting his dog, you settle in for the night. But sleep won't be easy with a horde of the undead outside...nor will surviving...

Broxo: Princess Zora has traveled way too long for her quest to be this pointless! Hoping to open negotiations with one of her fellow tribes, Zora had traveled for many months only to find the supposed home of the clan abandoned. All she finds instead is a lone warrior named Broxo, who has become accustomed to the harsh landscape and random undead that make life interesting. Even though Broxo doesn't seem to mind, Zora can't rest until she finds out what happened to the missing clan, and the real secret behind these monsters.

What did I like or not like?

You might be wondering why I put 2 reviews into 1 post this week. First of all, I'm taking a break for the holidays, so I figured I'd give you 2 books to try and hold you over lol.

The other reason was even though I heartily enjoyed both books, there wasn't a whole lot to make a review out of. The stories aren't too long, so I didn't want to give too much of the plot away.

But here are some things I can tell you. Both are graphic novels, and both include the undead, but that is really the only similarity between them. Daybreak is first person perspective (in a graphic novel which is cool), and Broxo is third person. Daybreak is more realistic fiction/sci-fi, and Broxo is more fantasy. Daybreak has a very limited color palette, and Broxo has a very lively color palette.

You know how sometimes you read a book and it wasn't necessarily heart-wrenching, hilarious, thought-provoking, or amazing, but was still enjoyable to read and worth your time? That is how I would categorize these 2 titles.

Let me know what you think when you read them, and have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Zombie Prom!

On a Saturday night after the library closed, a rare strain morphed teenaged patrons into brain-eating, make-up put oning, Thriller dancing zombies!

As everyone knows, zombies eat brains because they don't have any of their own, and a delicious way to do this is Jell-O. I took some foil, creased and folded it into a brain looking shape, and put it into a muffin tin. Just add some Jiggler recipe style Jell-O, and you're set.

Adding some red food coloring to pink lemonade makes a tasty blood juice, and dipping pretzel rods into melted chocolate with some almond bark at the ends make for some edible fingers =D

After some munching it was time to zombify ourselves! There were five effects we went for: whited-out faces, dark eyes, rotting flesh, messed-up hair, and blood.

If you buy some Ivory colored foundation and some dark eye shadow, you get some deathly looking skin with sunken eyes. For girls, tease your hair out, and for guys, mess it up!


You can do rotting flesh two different ways. Mix about equal parts of flour and corn syrup into a sticky paste, put it on your skin, and then press some toilet paper onto it. This becomes a "skin" you can tear, and also looks like rotting skin.

Another way to get the rotting skin look is to mix up flour, corn syrup, corn starch, and water, and apply it to your skin. Mix in the different ingredients until it starts to clump onto your skin. Start with your corn starch and if it's too runny, add some flour, or if it's too sticky, add some corn syrup.

Once you have all this "make-up" applied, add a generous amount of blood. You can mix corn syrup and flour (about two parts corn syrup to one part flour) with one drop blue food coloring and a lot of red food coloring to make a smearing, purplish blood, or use tomato paste for a clumping, red blood.

It wouldn't be much of a prom without dancing, and we thought Michael Jackson's "Thriller" would be appropriate. There is a whole series of YouTube videos that breaks down the dance step by step, and we used that to acquaint everyone with some zombie moves =D

This program was way too much fun and works well with the Summer Reading theme "Own the Night" and the upcoming Teen Read Week theme "It Came From the Library."

Brownies: The Chocolate Chip Variety

Once again, having a stove while doing cooking programs is very convenient :) We just did Chocolate Chip Brownies for our last Play With Your Food program, and part of the recipe is melting the chocolate chips on a stove top. Luckily, the same result could be accomplished with a microwave, but I thought the kids would enjoy working on a stove top (obviously with close supervision lol).

As everyone knows, but silly young adult librarians like me fail to take into account, is that brownies take a while to cook! The recipe I used takes about 40 minutes, which is a large chunk of an hour program. So, if I were to do it again, I would probably make it an hour and a half program instead.

Then the question becomes, what do you do with the kids while the brownies are cooking? I found that they had a really good time entertaining themselves. Now, they didn't have free range of the library, we were in our kitchen, but they were chatting, talking, and joking about this and that, and seemed to be doing okay with the waiting time.

But, something that I used to fill a little bit of the time was making cinnamon sugar tortillas. I had the kids tear tortillas into smaller pieces, sprinkle cinnamon-sugar over the top, and cooked them for about 5-7 minutes. They were surprisingly simple and delicious :)

Another idea I had but didn't quite use was something with mashmallows. These Zombie Marshmallows are super simple to do, and would also be quite hillarious hehe.

Whether you use some fillers or not, brownies were really popular, and the kids were really excited to make their own.

Zombie Storytime