Dead City

Gr 5-8--Brainy and awkward middle-schooler Molly is recruited by friends Alex, Grayson, and Natalie to train to become a member of Omega, a secret agency sworn to police and protect the undead in Manhattan. She gets her first assignment when bloodless dead bodies are found lined up in a park to form the Greek letter Omega. It is up to Molly and her crew to figure out who has it in for the Omegas before it is too late. Keeping the city safe from zombies takes her and her friends all over New York. Ponti incorporates several landmarks into the story: Roosevelt Island, Blackwell House, subway ghost stations, and the New York Marble Cemetery. The most significant Manhattan feature the author uses is schist, the type of rock from which the island was formed. In his Manhattan, the schist emits a unique energy. Because the zombies need it to survive, they stay underground, in their thriving Dead City, or as close to ground level as possible. Readers who enjoy a plot-driven story will like this one. There is no budding romance and very little character development. "Dead City" is all about the thrill of the (relatively bloodless and gore-free) hunt."Jennifer Prince, Buncombe County Public Library, NC" Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

In Dead City, James Ponti cleverly weaves Manhattan history into an action-packed plot to breathe new life into the zombie genre. Brainy, funny, and socially baffled Molly Bigelow makes for an irresistible narrator as she drives the story to a terrific twist of an ending. If I'd had the next installment, I'd have dived right in.—Suzanne Collins, author of THE HUNGER GAMES trilogy