Mean Ghouls

September 1, 2012
Grades 4-7 The first in a tween series about the undead, this follows Megan Murry as she deals with her new zombie state and her new boarding school. A far cry from Night of the Living Dead, Deutsch's story infuses humor into the horrors of middle school and decaying human bodies. She also rewrites the widely accepted rules of zombie behavior; there's no human-flesh eating here (the Zombie Academy is vegetarian), the transformation takes centuries but immediately confers immortality, and infected people can talk and walk just fine (running is more difficult). The virus (here called Zombitus) does affect the memory, however, which hampers Megan's efforts to figure out her new surroundings and find the virus antidote. In creating the three popular students who target Megan, Deutsch reminds us that evil cliques never die, but along the way she has plenty of fun with gross details (festering head wounds!), disgusting cafeteria choices, and annoying zombie symptoms. The pieces of Deutsch's story don't all hang together but then again neither does a zombie.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)