The Zombie Chasers

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