Jack and Jill Went Up to Kill

May 18th, 2012 | by Penguin Prince

Posted In: Blog

So I promised the next book I would blog about would be a little more mature. And I’m still working on a great one. I admit I read slow and don’t really fit reading books into my busy schedule as much as I should. But my cousin gave me a book last weekend that I couldn’t pass up. Not only was it an easy read, but it was entertaining as hell.

Mother Goose will be cooked!

Jack and Jill Went Up to Kill is a book of zombie nursery rhymes written by Michael Spradlin and illustrated by Jeff Weigel. Now I am 26 years old. I have not read nursery rhymes since I was maybe 6. Yet as I was reading this book I could not help but be driven back to my childhood, sitting on my mother’s knee reading my oversized book of Mother Goose and Grimm. I can remember sitting there and laughing with Mother over the exploits of Humpty Dumpty and delighting in the imagery of the Three Blind Mice. 20 years later not much has changed. I’m too big to sit on Mother’s knee anymore, but I did share this ghouled version of the nursery rhymes with her. And instead of laughing at the silliness of the Little Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, we were busting a gut over the gruesomeness of Baa, Baa, Zombie Sheep.

As far as creativity I loved the way Spradlin was able to instill in the rhymes in order to make them as zombie appropriate as possible. All the while for the most part he was able to keep up the same rhyming patterns and cadence of the original poetry. Not always was he perfectly successful, but when you’re dealing with zombies, sometimes things are going to get messy. Below is one of my favorite transformations from the book.

Little Miss Muffet Turned on a Tuffet

Little Miss Muffet Turned on a tuffet,

Eating fresh brains all day;

Along came a human,

She added some cumin,

And munched the poor man away.

Just as equally as creative was the effort of Jeff Weigel and his zombie illustrations. Just like most nursery rhyme books, every poem had a corresponding picture which helps the reader interpret the scenery played out in the story. His illustrations were critical to the success of the book as he brought to life to the undead imaginings of Spradlin’s creations. I had fun reading the poems and then matching the image in my head to the images in the book. Weigel’s work was much more hilarious.

Illustration for Three Zombie Mice

If you’ve liked what you’ve seen, Jack and Jill Went Up to Kill is published by HarperCollins. Jeff and Michael also have two other zombie themed books out entitled It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Zombies!, and Every Zombie East Somebody Sometime.

If you have a recommendation for a zombie book you would like me to review, please send me an email at penguinprince@grimcrew.com. You can also follow Dead Future on Facebook and Google +. You can also follow me on Twitter and Google +.

Till Fate brings our Future…

Penguin Prince