13 Days of Halloween: Flesh & Bone

by Jonathan Maberry
Simon & Schuster 2012

Benny and his friends continue on their quest to find what's left of civilization before the zombies and death cults get to them first. Third in a (seemingly) endless series.

Why is it so hard for writers, agents, editors and publishers to know when a story has gone on too long and jumped the shark? 

Long-time readers here at the excelsior file might remember how much I loved the first book in this series, Rot & Ruin. In it I thought Maberry had followed the time-honored tradition of using a known genre to explore some aspect of society, to provide a touch of social commentary among the horror. In that particular book I thought he'd touched on an allegory to our own times with zombies acting as a focus of xenophobic fear. There was a sense of "zombies were people, too" that underscored the ignorance of those who would simply choose to fear outsiders and live a life sheltered from the world at large. I thought Rot & Ruin might stand up over time as the beginning of a truly unique series.

The second book, Dust and Decay, was a little more of a hero's journey, the dark passage where Benny would become the merciful zombie silencer all the while working his way through the wilderness on a path toward finding the origins of a jet he once saw, his hope for a rebuilt civilization. In a sort of mash-up of influences there was a bit of a samurai movie that eventually gave way to a Thunderdome-esque ending that threatened to sink the entire story. There was also a hint of a new religion sprouting up from the decay, an apocalyptic death cult that was possibly more organized than Benny and company ever imagined.

Now comes Flesh and Bone, and in the anti-spoiler alert of the year, Benny and his friends don't end up any closer to finding that jet. Perhaps it was something in me that expected the story to come to some conclusion with this third book but it is so clear half way through (and confirmed in the end) that there is a great battle looming in an as-yet-published fourth book that I started feeling bored. How sad, to have felt such great promise in the beginning only to not really care enough by the end of the third book to even want to read the fourth.

I am not against the notion of epic tales, but when I look at a trilogy like Lord of the Rings and see what was accomplished in three books I tend to question whether lengthy series can actually justify their length. I also begin to wonder of the idea of television series, with their seemingly endless storylines, have conditioned readers to amble along until interest drops and then things get hastily wrapped up. Story arcs have multiplied and become so elastic and I don't always think that it serves the best interest of fiction in the end.

So Benny and Nix and Lilah and Chong continue on, with an army of mutated zombies and a war-hungry death cult and  escaped zoo animals all venturing into the wastelands of North America. If any traces of civilization survived that civil world has clearly been outnumbered by the rot and decay to the point where this reader asks "What's the point?"

But if your taste runs towards a small band of heroes facing off against zoms, Flesh and Bone's got your number.

13 Days of Halloween: The Monster's Monster

by Patrick McDonnell 
Little, Brown 2012 

Three little monsters decide to create a much bigger monster who, it turns out, teaches them that you don't HAVE to be a monster, just because you're a monster.  

Horned Grouch, hairy Grump, and two-headed Doom 'n' Gloom live in a castle atop a hill where their antics cause the villagers no end of fear. They smash and bash things, get upset over nothing, and their ten favorite words are all 'no.' One day they set out to Frankenstein themselves an ultimate monster but things don't go as plan when Monster turns out to be full of politeness and child-like wonder. Oh, the horror! as Monster teaches them to say Thank You (actually "Dank You" sounding like the late Alex Karras playing Mongo in a Mel Brooks movie), brings them powdered donuts to share, and takes them to the beach to watch the sunrise. Turns out all the little monsters needed was a good role model. 

There's something disarmingly cute about this. While thin on character development and motive there seems to be at the core a message about an accepted loss of civility. Or maybe a larger idea about transcending who we think by being shown what we can become. Or maybe it's just a twist on the Frankenstein narrative that suggests our collective "creations" can be larger and better than individual selves.

Or sometimes, a story about monsters is just a story about monsters.

McDonnell's art is breezy and cute in his typical style, though lacking the finer subtleties found in Me, Jane where character expressions on a stuffed animal did as much storytelling as the text. Here, the illustrations are all surface, leaving no real memorable images in their wake as the pages turn. That, coupled with the slight text, makes The Monster's Monster read like a light between-meal snack; more of a rice cracker than a cookie, and essentially calorie-free.

Still, for little monsters who might want a Halloween treat that isn't too scary, this would suffice.

13 Days of Halloween: Creepy Carrots

words by Aaron Reynolds 
pictures by Peter Brown  
Simon & Schuster 2012 

Jasper Rabbit loves carrots but they're starting to creep him out. Kids everywhere will cheer - they now have a real reason for hating carrots! They're creepy! But is there a deeper message here about the haves and the have-nots? 

Cute Little Jasper loves carrots, and how could he resist the temptation of Crackenhopper Field where they grow fat, crisp, and free? He can't. Then one day his little bunny ears twitch and he is sure he's being followed. Soon enough he is seeing creepy carrots everywhere he looks. The creepy carrots looking at him in the mirror? Those are orange-colored items on the edge of the bathtub. And in the closet? More orange carrot-shaped items.  

But after a week Jasper can't help but see those creepy carrots everywhere he looks. Finally Jasper hatches a plan and spends a Saturday enclosing Crackenhopper Field with a fence, surrounded by a moat full of alligators. There was no way any creepy carrot was ever going to escape and haunt Jasper again. 

And inside the fence the carrots rejoiced. Their plan had worked!  

It's easy to see this as Jasper's story – after all, he's the one being haunted at every turn – but the title of this (literally) dark picture book tells us who the story is really about. These poor, sentient carrots, passive in their existence, have had to deal with the horror of being yanked from the ground and consumed by a bunny with little concern than his own consumption. Is this a story of rabid consumerism? Perhaps, but then would that make the carrots the 99% who haunt in protest for their own rights to exist free of a predatory 1% who think nothing beyond the scope of their own desires.

Reading too much into a picture book again? Maybe the problem is we don't read deep enough.

As haunting as the carrots my be, they are merely creepy as an act of survival, and the ends justify the means as they find themselves in a gated community built on their behalf. That may seem workable for the moment, but how like the social welfare and housing programs of the past where well-intentioned governments (and some ill-intentioned ones as well) construct housing projects and artificial neighborhoods to protect the underclass.

Okay, okay, it's just a story about a rabbit haunted by carrots who are tired of watching kith and kin being eaten before their very carrot eyes. The illustrations in black, grey, and orange deliberately play off the Halloween theme of horror, a little trick-and-treat mixture of cute and creepy. The young'uns will eat it up, but not like carrots. More like candy corn I'd say.

13 Days of Halloween: Zombie in Love

Zombie in Love
by Kelly DiPucchio
illustrated by Scott Campbell 
Atheneum Books 2011  

A picture book about a zombie looking for love?  

Mortimer is, to be blunt, a bit clueless. He's looking for love in all the wrong places, scaring the pants off too many faces.  Does he not realize he's a zombie? Does he not understand that the living fear the living dead? In the end, it takes a personal ad (talk about a dead end) to bring Mortimer the one girl who cab return his putrefied affections. At a prom.

Granted, it's got cute moments, but its one of those picture books that make me wonder who the audience is: goth teens looking for a cute Valentine's Day gift? Tweens caught between being too old to trick-or-treat but still clinging to their younger days with newly jaundiced perspectives? Elementary school kids who are already fretting about finding a date for the prom?

The story feels too sophisticated for newly independent readers, full of too much mushy love stuff or too much gore-filled humor, and honestly just seems out of place among other picture books. It's like a zombie-themed valentine on steroids. 

I have to say, I was pleased to see a cheerful zombie picture book, but I wished it had been about something other than finding a mate. That's Frankenstein's territory.