Skip to main content

Zombie Baseball Beatdown

By
Zombie Baseball Beatdown
by Paolo Bacigalupi
Little, Brown, and Company, 2013.  292 pgs. Horror

     More than the zombies take a beating in Bacigalupi's first book for younger readers.  His hit list includes meat processing plants who exploit their workers and put consumer safety last; high-priced, slick-as-snakes lawyers; current immigration law and ignorant public opinion. Rabinadrath Chaterjee-Jones (aka Rabi) plays baseball on a team with friends Miguel and Joe, and enemies Sammy and Bart. Sammy's dad owns Milrow Meats where almost everyone in town works. Mysterious really bad smells having been coming from the factory lately, and some workers seem very fearful.  Others, like Miguel's parents, and then his aunt and uncle, have been deported. Soon Miguel and Rabi are being chased by their zombified baseball coach and then by zombie cows, mooing for brains. Worse still, the boys sneak into the Milrow factory where the zombie cows are being chopped into hamburger and shipped out, their still-animate heads left behind. As you can tell, Zombie Baseball Beatdown is not for the faint of stomach, though I know a number of young boys who will relish the gore (you'll excuse the expression) and learn important lessons about fairness and honor. Bacigalupi spends a bit too much time grinding his own axes (another expression you'll need to excuse) about immigration, food safety, and big corporations who care only for money--the kids will get it sooner than he thinks they will--but this is still a quick, sometimes funny version of the zombie apocalypse as it plays out in Middle America.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stand Tall by Joan Bauer

By DeeDee
Stand Tall By Siena Siegel by Joan Bauer Putnam, 2002, 182 pgs Realistic Fiction Tree is 12 years old and over 6 feet tall. That would be great if he were a basketball player, but he is not. Dealing with his unusual size is not Tree's only challenge. Tree's parents have recently gone through a divorce, and his grandfather has had his leg amputated as the result of an old Vietnam War injury. The strength of this book is the characterizations. All of the main characters are dimensional and sympathetic. Bauer sets the characters in real and often funny family situations. Best of all is the character of Tree. He is boy with a heart to match his stature. This is a great book for boys or girls ages 9-12, as a read aloud or for individual reading. This book could also be a good Rx book for children whose families are going through divorce, or for anyone who feels like they don't fit in.
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The New Girl

By
The New Girl By Cassandra Calin New York: Graphix, 2024. Comic. 261 pages. 12-year-old Lia and her family have just moved from Romania to Montreal, and she's doing her best to keep up with the changes. But, she's homesick. She misses the rest of her family, her friends, and her favorite Romanian treats. She doesn't speak French and her English is shaky, which makes it hard to make friends, even in her international immersion class. And she's dealing with super painful menstrual cramps every month. But before long, Lia starts to hit her stride. She befriends the other bilingual girls in her class, she gets a spot as the artist for her school's magazine, and even has a new crush -- Julien. Though she may be the new girl, Lia is starting to fit in. This slice of life graphic novel is an adorable choice for middle grade readers and young teens. Lia is a likable protagonist and readers will have little difficulty relating to her adjustment to school. The text speaks to a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker

By
  Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker By Heidi Heilig New York: Greenwillow Books, 2025. Fiction. 291 pages. Thanks to Cincinnati Lee's no good, dirty rotten, artifact stealing great great great grandfather, Cincinnati's family is now cursed and Cincinnati feels like it's up to her to break the curse. Which involves trying to steal the artifacts back from museums that her grandfather robbed from graves and archeological sites around the world and return them to their countries of origin. But when Cincinnati's first artifact stealing mission goes awry, she decides it might be more effective to steal an all-powerful artifact herself that she can use to break the curse - The Spear of Destiny. Unfortunately her race for the spear will pit her against art smugglers and thieves intent on finding the ancient artifact themselves. If you are looking for an Indiana Jones read-alike, this is the perfect for you! Heavy on the adventure with similar levels of mysticism to those seen in th...
Post a Comment
Read more