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The following books were reviewed from ARCs before publication date and are now available:

Poop Happened!: A History of the World from the Bottom Up by Sarah Albee, illustrated by Robert Leighton.

The Enemy by Charlie Higson.


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© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

The Enemy by Charlie Higson. Hyperion Books for Children, an imprint of Disney Book Group. Publication date May 2010. UK Book Website. Reviewed from ARC from publisher.

The Plot: Months ago, a deadly disease hit the world. Everyone over sixteen was affected, turning them into animal-like creatures who crave human flesh. Yes, you got it -- it's a grown-up-eat-kids world. Somehow, handfuls of children do survive the terror of seeing their parents die...or worse. Of seeing their siblings and friends taken and eaten by terrifying grown-ups. Food is running out, no medical supplies turns scratches into deadly injuries, hope is dying. Until someone appears -- telling of a utopia for children. A place where kids keep the grown ups far enough away to have some semblance of safety, where kids are growing their own food instead of scavenging for old tins. A safe haven... but first, the kids have to travel through the dangerous, adult infested city to get there.

The Good: Zombies! Zombie parents who eat their young! It's a zombified The Girl Who Owned a City! And even better -- at one point a character corrects us. It's not zombies because the adults didn't die and they can be killed by any traditional killing-a-person methods. Rather, the adults got sick (with a side effect that they look zombie like, decomposing flesh, broken bones, etc.), lost memory/humanity, and now want to eat human flesh. But they didn't die and then come back from the dead. So, not zombies.

ZOMBIES!!!!

Ahem. OK, so if you are into zombies, you want this book. If you are into "all the adults die, now what do the kids do" books, you want this book.

Now that the short version is out of the way, for the rest of you.

Higson is gritty and violent and scary. On the first page, a little kid gets taken by adults, thrown in a sack to be eaten later. And it's all downhill from there. If you want to be scared? Read this book.

A bunch of kids have turned a food-store (the Waitrose) into a headquarters, keeping the grown ups out, going on scavenging missions for food. (BTW, this is set in London; had it been set in the US, the kids would have been in Wegmans, I'm sure). Another group of kids is headquartered in Morrisons (say, a Food Town). Quasi enemies, because both groups want the same limited resources (canned foods in abandoned houses, haunted by diseased adults). One day, a young teen survivor shows up, saying Buckingham Palace (?!?!) is the promised land of safety and food. The Waitrose crew and the Morrisons team up to fight their way across London.

OF COURSE it isn't going to be easy! OF COURSE nothing is as it s