Formats: Print, digital
Publisher: Mott Haven Books
Genre: Apocalypse/Disaster, Blood & Guts, Zombie
Audience: Adult
Diversity: Black/African American/Caribbean American characters, Trinidad, Jamacian, Hispanic/Latinx characters
Takes Place in: New York City, USA
Content Warnings: Abelism, Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Body Shaming, Bullying, Cannibalism, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Gore, Medical Procedures, Miscarriage, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Slurs, Suicide, Violence (Highlight to view)
Blurb:
When it comes to horror, kids come in two types. Either they're sweet, innocent, completely helpless victims the protagonist needs to protect at all costs, or they're evil little bastards that will send you into the cornfield, control you with their telepathic powers, or just straight up murder you because they're the spawn ofSatan. The children in Everything I Know About Zombies I Learned in Kindergarten somehow land right dab in the middle of the victim/villain scale. They're neither helpless nor innocent after being forced to go through things no child should go through, nor are they actively malicious, only killing for survival. They also don't seem to possess the immunity to handle situations that most children do in horror stories. Kids get eaten by Zombies, shot, torn apart, and baby zombies get spiked in the head. So if you can't stomach minors getting killed in fiction, I recommend staying far, far away from this book.
Letitia, the nine-year-old
protagonist, is easily the most competent, clever, and
practical character in the book, organizing her little
sister's kindergartners into a unit of efficient zombie killers and
quickly picking up survival skills. Growing up with a drug addicted
mom, Letitia is used to taking charge and picking up adults' slack, in
addition to becoming wary of the world at a young age. In the early chapters,
they try to look for the childrens' parents, eager to be rid of such a
heavy responsibility, only to discover their dickbag guardians all evacuated
without them. (Who the hell just leaves their kid behind during a disaster?
You'd think they'd at least make some effort to save them, damn.) The adult
survivors actually pose more of a threat than the zombies (or cucos,
as the children call them), their greed and despair claiming far more lives
than the undead do. It's weird, even though the children are far from
innocent, having become skilled killers, the adults are the ones who've become
morally bankrupt. The few who do manage to hold on to their optimism and
naivety don't last long, foolishly trusting the wrong people or refusing to
admit the world, and the rules, have changed. The kids might be depressingly
cynical and violent now, but they're merely adapting to their new
reality, and are much more practical than their grown counterparts.
It's no wonder the adults are so unnerved by them.
I was expecting the
children being eaten by the undead to be the most disturbing
part, until the book turned out to be about the death of innocence,
and children being forced to adapt to a situation no child should ever go
through. It's one thing to read about fantastical monsters like Zombies attacking
a bunch of helpless kids, but quite another when they're dying from gun
violence, or growing up in crushing poverty. In the first, the situation is
pure fiction, no real child is ever going to be attacked by the undead, and you
can feel safe in that knowledge. But it hits close to home when it comes
to real world problems. Even if the children in the story are fictional, you
know millions of real kids out there right now who are surrounded by
abuse, violence, and probably living without basic necessities, and that's super
depressing. So basically, it's a story about how kids with rough lives can't
rely on adults (because they're either malicious, incompetent, or
ignorant) and have to take charge of their own safety and survival, which
probably would've ended up happening with or without undead hordes overtaking
the city. I know zombie apocalypse stories are generally bleak, but damn.
The zombies in the story
are pretty much your typical Romero zombies, slow-moving and stupid,
and not too difficult to kill as long as there aren't a lot of them
and their brains are destroyed, a feat which the children usually accomplish by
stabbing them in the eye with garden stakes. Unfortunately, everyone
becomes zombified upon death, regardless of how they die, so the undead
multiply even if they can't bite anyone. Letitia quickly figures out that the
zombies are attracted to movement and sound, and is smart enough to stick
to quiet, secluded areas, while the adults continue to attract the
undead with the buzz of their emergency generators and gun fire (because
the adults are somehow less competent than grade schoolers, another reason
Letitia avoids them).
Unfortunately for
me, most of the book is dedicated to the practically of surviving in
an abandoned New York City, wandering around and looting mini-marts for
supplies…which made for less than stimulating reading. I'm going to admit right
now, I don't like camping or fishing, or any form of "roughing
it," and I don't like reading about it, either. I'm pretty
sure I'd die if I went for more than 40 minutes without WiFi.
So I've long ago accepted the fact that I would probably be the first
person to die in a zombie apocalypse type situation due to my dependence on
modern conveniences and comfort, and I'm okay with that. I'm sure
some people will find all the survivor type stuff super interesting, as is
evident from Discovery Channel's programming, but I was hoping for way more suspense and
undead violence, and less foraging and guinea pig farming. Speaking of which,
there's a decent amount of animal death too, apparently Zombies like to eat
puppies as much as they like to eat little kids.
I would not last long in an Apocalypse, or even a dead zone. How did I even function back in the 80's? |
Stepping away from the
story for a moment, I feel it's worth mentioning that while this book was a
finalist for a multicultural fiction award, and has a very diverse
cast, it was written by a white guy. Obviously, I prefer Own Voices
books, but I've reviewed non-minority authors writing about minority
characters on here before, and I probably wouldn't even be mentioning the
author's race except for one thing that was bothering me. For the
most part Williams does do a pretty decent job at representing a very racially
diverse cast, and has clearly put a lot of effort into making the children's
voices seem authentic. But the way the protagonist, Letitia, spoke came
off as iffy to me, and I found myself side-eyeing like I always do when
white people try to replicate the slang and speech patterns used by people
of color within their communities. Now, it's totally possible Letitia is
completely accurate to how Caribbean children speak, and I'm just super
ignorant. It's just as possible Williams was trying to portray
the way an average nine-year-old speaks, and Letitia's ethnicity had
nothing to do with it. I mean, I have no idea what children are supposed
to sound like, and my mom was a grammar obsessed English major so I probably
sounded like an overly-formal weirdo at that age. (No one says "to
whom are you referring" or "may I please", when they're in
Kindergarten mom, GOD.) I honestly don't know, so I'm afraid I'm going to
have to leave that distinction to someone more qualified. And if I am jumping
to conclusions, well, blame it on all the racist pidgin I've heard spouted by
characters like Long Duk Dong and the Crows from Dumbo (did you know the
main crow's name is Jim? Damn, Disney...) over the years making me super wary.
Everything I Know About Zombies I Learned in Kindergarten definitely has flaws, most of the adults (and a few of the kids) get so little characterization it's hard to figure out who's who, the action scenes are confusing, and Williams spends way too much time on boring minutiae, but it's still an enjoyable read. The horror is less the gory, run away from the monster kind like I was expecting, and more a slow building horror at the nature of humanity and how adults kind of suck.
Seriously, Jim Crow! WTF were you thinking Disney!?! At least they're not as bad as Sunflower from Fantasia. |
Everything I Know About Zombies I Learned in Kindergarten definitely has flaws, most of the adults (and a few of the kids) get so little characterization it's hard to figure out who's who, the action scenes are confusing, and Williams spends way too much time on boring minutiae, but it's still an enjoyable read. The horror is less the gory, run away from the monster kind like I was expecting, and more a slow building horror at the nature of humanity and how adults kind of suck.
No comments:
Post a Comment