Penguin Books Blog

Dear Reader,

 

We all need to be scared. It’s good for the soul.

 

Having spent five years writing straight thrillers for kids I was tempted to try another genre. I thought I owed it to the children to scare the living daylights out of them. My boys love horror, and my youngest is obsessed by zombies. They fascinate and terrify him at the same time. So I thought: why not a zombie book for kids?

 

It’s kids versus adults. It’s Jack and the Beanstalk, hobbits versus orcs, Perseus versus the Gorgons, the monkeys versus the Twits. What it isn’t is ‘The Famous Five Meet the Harmless Zombies’. The kids are in very real danger, the body count is high, and I hope I give a great many children sleepless nights.

 

When the real world is full of very frightening dangers, the safe terrors of a good horror movie are the best way of scaring your pants off without becoming terminally depressed. Maybe my story will take their minds off the real problems in their lives for a little while and fire their imaginations. What would it be like to have the run of London with no adults around? You could live where you wanted, go where you wanted, do what you wanted . . .

 

Just don’t get caught or you’ll be eaten.

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