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Moms vs. Zombies, Mother’s Day Edition: Mother May I?

Welcome to the final entry in our Mother’s Day lineup. Today our zombie editor, Michele Lee, shares with us her thoughts about building a culture of reading and writing when you’re a horror-loving mom.

Michele Lee is the author of Rot and mother of budding writer Rose Lee. She is also a book reviewer in addition to her role as zombie editor for MonsterLibrarian.com.

Mother May I?

By Michele Lee

As if it’s not bad enough that we parent these days in the spotlight of public scrutiny,  there comes a point where you hear the dreaded words “You read what?”

It’s hard to avoid zombies, werewolves, vampires and ghouls these days. The kids even have their own versions, the Poison Apple books from Scholastic, Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie by David Lubar, The Zombie Chasers, Zombiekins, and. of course, Zombie Butts from Uranus by Andy Griffiths. This isn’t a new thing. In my younger days we had There’s a Batwing in my Lunchbox by Ann Hodgman, Bunnicula by James Howe and The Little Vampire.

We grew up with it. While those a generation older than us teethed on Stephen King, we blossomed from elementary monsters to R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike and Richie Tankersley Cusick. Don’t forget that L.J. Smith and her Vampire Diaries were ours first. On our side of things we wonder how the Jason and Freddy-loving teens became the same parents who sneer at our zombie T-shirts and look at us with suspicion when they see us reading the latest Brian Keene in front of our kids.

As parents, we’ve already been there, wondering where’s the limit for our adorable little spawn. Of course we don’t let them watch a Saw marathon. We don’t read Laurell K. Hamilton to them before bed every night either. But the nature of kids is to idolize us adults (which is at once one of the most awesome, and scariest parts of being a parent) so of course, things bleed.

Two years ago now (almost to the day) while I was editing Rot for its launch, my daughter decided she was going to write a zombie story too. She even asked me how to spell zombie, so she could write it on her to do list (and you better believe I have pictures of that in her scrapbook). Rot is not in any way at all appropriate for a kid to read, and I’d been very careful not to let her hear me reading it out loud. But she knew, and had seen the illustrations, and she wanted to write a zombie book too.

What came out was a most excellent story, that I promptly paid her a dollar to let me publish on my blog (because money flows to the writer). Enthusiastic, she pitched me a sequel (with evil ballerinas!). Write it, I said. And she lost interest. She was five.

Does she still know about zombies and vampires and what kind of things I write? Sure. She can grab the books my work is in, stare down the occasional meat puppet on the cover and wave it at me, exclaiming “This is your book, Mom.” But she doesn’t see terrifying tales of torture and sickness and blood-curdling terror. They’re things Mom has done that we all should be proud of, like her spelling tests and her brother’s artwork.

Kids get scared, but they are not adults and they do not think the same way. Scary and gross to kids are snot monsters that swallow hamsters (who are later saved by people wearing underwear and capes). Scary is something the world teaches them.

My daughter, accidentally one night, saw most of Repo: the Genetic Opera. She woke up in the middle of the night, and I was watching it and didn’t see her sitting in the doorway, fascinated. Ask her what it’s about and she’ll say there’s a pretty, blind woman who sings songs and tries to help a girl who finds out her dad is a bad guy. It’s not the blood, the repossessing of organs, the corporate greed, the hedonism or the addiction that scares her. And the bit where Paris Hilton’s face falls off? That’s just silly. Really, she doesn’t think the movie is that scary at all, just sad. The bit that resonated with her was the girl holding on to her dad crying because he wasn’t what she thought he was.

When kids are scared, it’s personal. Generally, they aren’t scared of monsters and blood, they’re scared of mom and dad abandoning them, or letting people down themselves. You know how kids always assume if something bad happens then they must have done something wrong? They aren’t scared of the same things we are because they haven’t connected with the real scary things in the outside world. My daughter wasn’t scared about 9/11 because she had no clue what it was, but I don’t know an adult who wasn’t.

When you’re a horror-loving parent, the wicked, inhuman beasties remind your kids of you, a person they trust and love. I don’t advocate having a popcorn and showing-of-Chucky night for family time, but if your kids want their own scary stories, how is sharing time, and a small piece of something you love with them, so wrong?

Besides, they need to be prepared for the zombie apocalypse too, right?

Moms vs. Zombies, Mother’s Day Edition: A Mom, A Plan, A Minivan

Kirsten Kowalewski has worked as a children’s librarian and school library media specialist. Currently she is a reviewer and editor for MonsterLibrarian.com. Kirsten has two children, ages 3 and 5, who you would NOT want to be boarded into a basement with during a zombie apocalypse.

Kirsten’s husband has asked her to make it very clear that this entry is a work of FICTION. Check back tomorrow (Yikes! Mother’s Day already) for our final Mother’s Day entry.

A Mom, A Plan, A Minivan

My husband is driving me crazy.

Every night he comes home from work, eats dinner, sinks into his recliner, and zones out in front of the television.  If the kids start jumping all over him, sometimes he’ll move to the couch, but even then I can’t tear him away from professional wrestling long enough to get him to talk about what’s going on.

He tells me that it’s just craziness on the Internet, that the media is just hyping things up, and that it’s no big deal, nothing to worry about.  He says not to get whipped up into hysteria by talking to my friends about what’s in the news.  Everything will be okay, he assures me.

Though even if it’s not okay, he says, even if it’s really happening, he doesn’t see why I need to get into the details. He bought a zombie survival kit off eBay, and he figures that if that doesn’t work, we’re toast, anyway.

Personally, I don’t appreciate his attitude.

I mean, I read the news. This zombie thing isn’t just showing up in wacko/conspiracy theory blogs or cheesy, obviously fake videos on YouTube. And it’s crossing political boundaries: I’ve seen stories on Fox News agreeing with articles in the New York Times.  I can’t watch the news feeds, though—the carnage is awful, and I just don’t have the stomach for that kind of thing.

Maybe if it was just me, I’d head to Costco and stock up on bottled water, canned goods, and toilet paper; I could board over the basement windows and hide out. It might even be an opportunity to spend quality time with the man I love. But…there are the kids. And there is no way in the world that we can stay cooped up in a boarded-up room, even a big one, with two kids under five with energy to burn who are capable of producing the kind of ear-splitting screams ours can, and one of whom isn’t potty trained.

Crap.

What happens if the zombies come and I run out of pull-ups? It’s too bad they have no sense of smell—otherwise I could just wave the stinky ones in front of them to drive them away.

I’ve talked with friends about loading up our minivans to form a caravan—strength in numbers—but I don’t know what we’d do when we run out of gas. Running out of gas on the highway seems like a bad idea, but if we stopped a gas station we could be walking into a trap…

Geez, maybe my husband has a point. I really sound paranoid.

But, if we were to do this, where could we go that’s far enough from the city to avoid the major zombie attack, but close enough that we won’t run out of gas?  Wherever it is, I kinda doubt we’ll find a Chick-fil-a , but hopefully we can manage a zombie-proof playground of some kind.

While we try to figure out where we’ll go, I’m making a list of stuff I think we’ll need to take. You can fit a lot of stuff in a minivan, especially if you’re good at packing. Guns make me nervous, even the toy ones, but I can pull an emergency survival kit together. Most of that stuff is in a basic first-aid kit (i.e. one with LOTS of bandages, adhesive wraps , painkillers, gauze, children’s Tylenol, a thermometer, tweezers, and a long list of other things I keep on hand for the sick and wounded), plus my son’s inhaler and my own meds. (I’m a little worried about what will happen when I run out of meds, so hopefully this will all be over before my three-month mail order supply is gone)  Soap, definitely, both solid and liquid (I see dishes and laundry probably being washed by hand); towels; underwear; toilet paper; pull-ups; a portable generator; water; extra gasoline; milk boxes and snacks for the kids; the GPS unit…there’s a lot to consider.

I really love my kids.  I don’t want to see them hurt, and I definitely don’t want them turning into zombies.  So I am taking in every single hug, every “I missed you, Mommy” to remember, just in case.

I wonder…do you think, if you were firm enough…would zombies sit quietly in timeout?