Night of the Living Dead, George Romero’s 1968 cult classic, is really (if you ask me) what started it all. Now, maybe Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein helped, but Night of the Living Dead really inspired 20th century zombie lovers to create a plethora of zombie novels, zombie comic books, zombie movies, even zombie celebrations . There have been dozens upon dozens of zombie movies; Too many for me to even begin to name. Wikipedia (oh, most helpful of sites) has a great list of zombie films.
The true zombie madness died down a bit during the 1990’s, but I like to think that books such as The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z by Max Brooks* and movies such as Shaun of the Dead and Resident Evil (based on the games, of course) really helped bring back the zombie craze. Since then, Stephen King has written a zombie book (Cell) and Robert Rodriguez wrote and directed Planet Terror. You can even find some zombie manga (Zombie-Loan and Reiko the Zombie Shop)!
But now, finally, we have some teen zombie novels!
The basic premise of the book? Kids are starting to not die. But don't call them zombies. They are "differently biotic" or "living impaired." Phoebe is a goth girl. Her best friend, Adam, is a jock. And Phoebe's crush, Tommy, is "living impaired."
Some of the kids in school don't like those who are "living impaired." I mean, really don't like them. But Phoebe doesn't care. And this may lead to something dangerous for Phoebe, Tommy, and even Adam.
This is taken from BarnesandNoble.com:From the moment Hannah Sanders arrived in town, she felt there was something wrong.A lot of houses were for sale, and the town seemed infected by an unearthly quiet. And then, on Hannah's first day of classes, she ran into a group of cheerleaders-the most popular girls in school.The odd thing was that they were nearly identical in their appearance. Blonde, beautiful, and deathly pale.But Hannah wants desperately to fit in-regardless of what her friend Lukas is telling her: If she doesn't watch her back, she's going to be blonde and popular and dead-just like all the other zombies in this town . . .
*Although this is not a proven, scientific fact, I bet if you asked a bunch of babies (or cats or dogs) if they liked zombies they most likely wouldn’t tell you that they don’t like zombies, so it is probably safe to assume that babies (and cats and dogs) do, indeed, like zombies.
* Son of one of my personal heroes, director Mel Brooks, who directed Young Frankenstein, which harkens back to our friend Mary Shelley’s well-known novel
