Daybreak

November 15, 2011
This bleak graphic novel opens on a desolate, rubble-strewn post-apocalyptic world, with a raggedly dressed one-armed man offering to lead the reader to his underground shelter ( It'll be dark soon. Better come with me ). As we accompany him on expeditions for food and supplies and encounter a small handful of other desperate survivors, we learn that the world has been overrun by zombies, and the demise of civilization is inevitable. Ralph skillfully builds the tension as we evade the zombie onslaught, making the story so gripping that it's easy to overlook the understated effectiveness of his approach. The zombies are never clearly shown and only occasionally glimpsed, making them all the creepier, and Ralph's use of an unvarying layout of six uniform panels per page further reduces the sensationalism. The likely audience for this graphic novel is fans of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead and other mainstream zombie fare. With luck, they'll appreciate the sophistication and subtlety of Ralph's quietly devastating end times tale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)