by Kelly DiPucchio and Scott Campbell
Book Design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian
Published by Atheneum Books For Young Readers
An imprint of Simon and Schuster
Welcome to the shorts SHORT Review, today we'll be talking about Zombie In Love (you can check out it's sequel here). The simplest story you could see a mile away, boy meets girl, then a quickstep to the altar. Though by the end of the book you'd want no one else in his life then the woman that found him.
In life there's a lot of radical ideas that we make up, like the abstract thought of time. Though in this Children's Illustrated Novel we join the adventures of love. That all inspiring and crushing emotion, even after death we're bound by our hearts. This is a beautiful telling of a person looking to find love in another. The best part about the main character being a Zombie is that this represents that person, their life style, their personal grooming habits, even what type of entertainment they enjoy. Majority of existence, we find people the most attractive when certain ideas mix, I'm not saying there's a "one" though in this story our main character has tried many methods and relations before she found him. Remember the plot isn't thick, our Zombie protagonist meets a Zomberella, then they get married. This is a lovely story of someone that believes there's another like them, it's literal since they're both decomposing stiffs. It would be great (in the real World) to have a literary device that would allow you to know that people in your life (romantically) would be compatible.
One of the most trivialized things about a book is the design, Children's Illustrated Novels especially. It's maybe the number one thing that I look at is the design. Designers are the ones that create the presented experience and this is what fabricates a hold on the reader from start to finish, since it will be what takes the emergence of the story and the art.
The Water-color and the design of the characters are fantastic, though water colors and Zombies, are the most cliche for contemporary books. It works so well for decay, and making situations more awkward since a corpse is making romantic advances, and creating a jouissance space that feels clammy. The character acting was well composed, which is common place for a lot of Children's Illustrated Novels, though not so fully realized in a first novel, which is a surprise to find in this book. Scott Campbell made the characters move and flow, but as an idea of motion within inaction. Though it was the background characters (extras) that stole scenes, a spectacular job of reacting to the insanity of Mortimer (our protagonist). One thing I really love are running gags, in the story the joke is an extreme closeup of the Zombie and/or the Zomberella smiling. It's such a good poke at a lot of kid's books and it gives (in a way) a homage to the Loony Tunes cartoons when needing to point out something that demanded full concentration or was incredibly grotesque.
All in all this was a wonderful story, with a more contemporary way of finding love. Since most stories rely on the characters to just happen on each other, rather than putting in effort and trying to improve or signal another's heart toward their own. In short, if you get this for the plot you will be not be challenged, though if you over think the story and enjoy the details and wonderfully water-colored pages, then you've made a fantastic addition to your collection.
I trust you enjoyed the inspection, thank you for reading.
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