{"id":603,"date":"2014-03-18T21:09:19","date_gmt":"2014-03-18T21:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/?p=603"},"modified":"2014-03-02T21:16:14","modified_gmt":"2014-03-02T21:16:14","slug":"zombies-vs-unicorns-edited-by-justine-larbalestier-and-holly-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/?p=603","title":{"rendered":"Zombies vs. Unicorns, edited by Justine Larbalestier and Holly Black"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/zombievsunicorns.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-604\" alt=\"zombievsunicorns\" src=\"http:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/zombievsunicorns.jpg\" width=\"127\" height=\"193\" \/><\/a>It began as an Internet debate on the blogs of YA authors Justine Larbalestier and Holly Black. Which one is cooler-zombies or unicorns? Justine announced that she was pro-zombie and anti-unicorn, and Holly stood up for the awesomeness of unicorns versus the nastiness of zombies.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">The discussion grew animated enough that Holly and Justine recruited writers to form Team Unicorn and Team Zombie and published an anthology. The resulting stories, some about zombies and some about unicorns (clearly marked), are unconventional, imaginative, sometimes funny, and often disturbing.\u00a0 Each story is preceded by an introduction and bickering between Justine and Holly about the pros and cons of zombies and unicorns.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\"> My favorites include Alaya Dawn Johnston\u2019s \u201cLove Will Tear Us Apart\u201d, a powerful, terrifying, somehow sweet,\u00a0 and ultimately doomed, love story from a zombie\u2019s point of view;\u00a0 Naomi Novik\u2019s \u201cPurity Test\u201d, a wisecracking urban fantasy that shatters the stereotypes of unicorns and virgins; Maureen Johnson\u2019s \u201cChildren of the Revolution\u201d,\u00a0 which veers between creepiness and humor as a college student babysitting for a rock star discovers the hard way that the children are monsters;\u00a0 and Meg Cabot\u2019s \u201cPrincess Prettypants\u201d, an entertaining send-up of the hearts-and-rainbows unicorns everyone thinks of when unicorns come up in conversation, with a great revenge scenario to boot.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\"> All the stories are strong, though, and I came away with a new appreciation for both zombies and unicorns. The only thing missing was a story with an actual battle between them: in the battle between zombies and unicorns, who really WOULD win? Highly, highly recommended for YA collections and high school library media centers. Ages 14 and up.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Contains:\u00a0 language, violence, gore, bestiality, homosexuality, drug use, zombie cannibalism, animal cruelty, childbirth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Review by Kirsten Kowalewski<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It began as an Internet debate on the blogs of YA authors Justine Larbalestier and Holly Black. Which one is cooler-zombies or unicorns? Justine announced that she was pro-zombie and anti-unicorn, and Holly stood up for the awesomeness of unicorns versus the nastiness of zombies.\u00a0 The discussion grew animated enough that Holly and Justine recruited [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,64,20,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-fantasy","category-ya-books","category-zombies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Eu9f-9J","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":605,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions\/605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}