Title: Zombie-Kids
Author: Julia Dweck
Illustrator: Mark Draisey
Year published: 2012
Publisher: KiteReaders
Number of pages: 20
Recommended age: 4+
Son Rating: ★★★★★
Mom Rating: ★★★★★
Reviewed by: Renee and Dominic (Mother and Son)
Summary (Amazon): Zombie-Kids is a ghoulishly fun rhyming adventure. Did you know that zombies are people that have feelings, too? They like to be loved just like me and like you. Join the zombie-kids as they bowl, dance, skate, and go to the movies in their unique zombie-way. You’ll have an eerily good time.
SON SAYS
What it’s about: This book is about zombies that are friendly who come out at night.
What I liked and disliked: I liked how you learned that zombies are actually nice. The pictures of the zombies were not scary. They were funny.
There were lots of good parts. It was funny how one of the zombies had no head and he chopped off his own foot. I liked the part where the dog runs off with one of the zombie bones. It was funny when, if you are sitting behind a zombie in the movie theatre and you can’t see, they can take their head off and put it on their knees. The zombies were eating eyeballs instead of popcorn in the movie theatre. I liked that zombies are actually really good bowlers because if they’re not going to get all the bowling pins down, then they can roll their head a different way to get all of the pins down.
When the zombies were going camping, one of the zombies feet caught on fire – that was funny. It was funny how they are good golfers because they always keep their eye on the ball cause one of their eyes is the ball. I learned that if the zombies get hungry then you should just be like a statue and they will eventually stomp away.
There was nothing I didn’t like about this book.
My bottom line: I loved this book so much I want to read it every day. I would recommend it to everybody.
MOM SAYS
What it’s about: In sing-song rhyme, Dweck takes us along a journey of what happens after the sun goes down and the zombies kids come out to play. It may surprise you to learn that zombie kids are not that much different from real kids!
What I liked and disliked: We love everything Halloween in this house and we are pretty excited to be featuring Halloween books all month long. In our household, the kids are fascinated by zombies year round. In fact, in our neighborhood, there is a weekly zombie cafe hosted by one of the local restaurants so we see zombies in full costume walking on the sidewalk every weekend. As a result, my kids are convinced that zombies are real. Luckily, this book confirms what we’ve been saying all along…zombies really are very nice! 
When we first agreed to read and review Zombie-Kids, I was a bit worried about whether the images in the book would be too frightening for my kids. It turns out that they are hilarious. The images are so great and more along the lines of the video game Plants vs. Zombies. The illustrations are completely silly and not remotely scary. In fact, they are outstanding.
We all really enjoyed the story itself, told through a series of rhyming verses. There are so many funny parts that had us laughing out loud – many of which are mentioned above by my son. There is one part of the book that I would like to share because each of the four times that I’ve read this book to my kids, I actually stop and say it’s my favorite part. This is the page about bowling:
Here’s some advice that each zombie supposes:
Don’t poke your fingers inside of their noses,
Hold the head by each ear, as you carefully linger,
So you’re not to get zombie-snot on each finger.
Of course the accompanying image is of a headless zombie demonstrating (using his own head) of the consequences of using the nostrils as the bowling ball holes. 
I do have one comment to make. I’ve stated above that the book is 20 pages long. Importantly, the word density is quite high. For example, on the bowling page, there are 8 rhyming lines. This is double what is typical for picture books. Also, each of the 20 pages has an illustration and accompanying text. It did not feel like a short book (i.e., you get your money’s worth!).
My bottom line: This is currently the most requested book in our house – and we have a house full of books! I think that really does say it all, doesn’t it? I even read it to another boy my son’s age and he LOVED it too. I would recommend this wonderful Halloween-themed picture book to families with children ages 4 and up. It is a lot of fun!
Zombie-Kids was provided to us by the author free-of-charge in exchange for our honest review.
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