That’s Not Your Mommy Anymore: A Zombie Tale

That’s Not Your Mommy Anymore: A Zombie Tale is a book in which the unnamed protagonist notices miscellaneous hints as to the current status of his mother, from loving and living to her eventual undead organ-eating state.

Through a series of illustrations and short little verses, we learn various signs of the undead scourge and when to run away from mommy as opposed to run toward her.

Having both a love of zombie tales, and a newfound library of children’s books to compare to, I thought this might be the perfect introduction book to set my child on a life of being a weird little kid.

The World

The zombies in That’s Not Your Mommy Anymore are George Romero style slow moving slow turning biters, which doesn’t do all that much for me. There are no fast movers, or anything beyond Mommy’s strangeness followed by the change in which our protagonist is there for.

There are no struggles for survival with the remaining humans, no storied encounters with other six year olds as they tell how their parents eventually went mad and ate each other, and everything rhymes.

The book finds its way to a conclusion of the boy hanging out on a rooftop with some other children as the city burns and the zombies face a showdown with the remnants of humanity, I assume. Either that or the kid’s are going to starve on the rooftop while they play chess with someone across the way. It’s up to your imagination.

But for a children’s themed book it hits the right points:

• Child’s interaction with parent
• Explanation of parent’s state
• Zombie fostered desire to see the world

I’d like to have seen

As this is for zombie enthusiasts at heart, perhaps some mention of fast movers, initial contamination style, government breakdown, looting, post-zed civilization, etc.

Basically as a zombie book it felt extremely dated, pre Walking Dead (which has been around in comic form since 2003,) introduce/reduce narrative style, pre Umbrella Corp, it actually sort of felt like it was based on having only been introduced to the Romero style, and parodied off of Night of the Living Dead.

But you can’t have everything…

Illustrating a point

The selling point of this is the illustrations, they’re adorable if a bit macabre for tiny ones. How you’re going to view them depends entirely on you. For me they’re adorable. Then again I think plush zombies are cute.

If your tyke or tot is easily scared and has not been introduced to these things from an early age, this could be world altering and mind-scarring. Then again so could anything, you’re going to need to figure out where you stand here.

For babies it’s cute bright colors, according to some of the reviews I’ve read it’s somewhere in between the best book ever and child abuse depending on the child.

Who is this for?

I sort of have a feeling this was written back in about 2006 when Zombies and the internet were first starting to fester together. It wasn’t published until 2011, and now in 2014 it feels like it’s been done. Then again perhaps that’s just how the internet feels these days.

In 2006 it would have been for your nerd parent zombie enthusiast friends and it would have been groundbreaking. In 2011 when it was published it registered as cute, and in 2014 when it finally made it to me it’s got my zombie nerd knickers in a “oh you could have done so much more” bunch.

My 10 month old loves the illustrations, however the book is not baby proof, which if it were might be perfect.

I think this is a book to have in your library and break out occasionally, but the story was a tad unfulfilling and left me wanting more, much like my adult reading of the Pokey Little Puppy. What were you trying to tell me Puppy? WHAT???

With the ability to terrorize those who might understand it, the ability to delight those that don’t, it exists as a piece of parody that you have to be in a specific place to actually use.

Fortunately I live in that place, and for the moment the bright illustrations and rhyming are for my baby, and the knowledge that somewhere, even though I’m not harming my baby in the least, someone is getting wound up and pissed off over this book and my use of it, it works for me.

That’s Not Your Mommy Anymore: A Zombie Tale is available from Amazon for $8.82.