Do you judge a book by its title? I did for this one. Zombies did not sound like a book I wanted to read. I saw this book listed inside the back cover of A Good Day for Climbing Trees.
Then I made three discoveries. First of all I loved A Good Day for Climbing Trees by Jaco Jacobs and so I book talked it during a book week event at a small rural school. While I was talking about A Good Day for Climbing Trees one of the Year 6 students exclaimed with great excitement that she had read another book by Jaco Jacobs - A Good Night for Shooting Zombies. I was curious how this book had reached this reader in Australia (it is from South Africa) and also how a book with such an odd title could elicit such joy.
Secondly Jaco Jacobs has been nominated by IBBY in South Africa for the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen medal. As a member of IBBY Australia I am very interested in this award. Finally I was browsing a discount book store in the city last week and I spied A Good Night for Shooting Zombies at a bargain price so I picked it up.
Last night I started to read this book and by morning it was finished. Yes it is THAT good.
I love that the title has two meanings. The group of kids, especially Vusi, are making or shooting a movie about zombies. The final scenes in the movie involve shooting the zombies - don't worry they use toy guns and this scene is actually a wonderful celebration of community.
Martin (nickname Clucky) has lots of chickens. His dad showed him how to care for them but sadly his dad has died in a tragic accident. Martin is saving the money he gets from selling the eggs. He has an important reason for doing this.
Vusi lives next door to Martin. Vusi does not go to school because he has Hodgkin's disease. Vusi loves watching zombie movies and so he has decided to make one of his own.
Clucky meets Vusi when Vusi's dog attacks the chickens and Kathleen (a leghorn chicken) is killed. This meeting is the beginning of an important friendship. Clucky is lonely at school because he is a clever boy who does not fit in. He does not understand why this movie is important to Vusi but he is happy to be involved. Later Chris (Christine) joins them and the action really heats up. Vusi wants to find a shed where they can film some scenes from the movie. Chris has a shed but it does contain a lot of things that belong to her brother who is in jail. When local criminals discover our team of movie makers things become very dangerous.
Spoiler alert - this is a book that ends in tragedy and yet at no time does it feel sad. Using the time they had available these young friends have made special memories for themselves and for the people they love.
One aspect of this book I really enjoyed was Clucky's obsession with numbers. He calculates precisely when things happen, how long they take and he is always calculating the numbers he encounters to check if they are happy numbers. (see page 23).
"While racing home I thought of Aunt Hantie. She said that her husband died ten years ago. That amounts to 3,652 days, if you add two days for leap years. And that amounts to 86,648 hours. How do you survive that many hours when you're as lonely as she is?"
This book has been made into a movie. You can read about it here and see the trailer. The movie is called Nul is Nie Niks Nie.
This book was written in 2013 and translated in 2018. Here is the Afrikaans cover:
Never too sentimental or depressing, A Good Night for Shooting Zombies strikes a perfect balance of humor and heartbreak and helps to define what friendship really means. Foreword Reviews
Just like the children in The Little Wave - Martin, Vusi and Chris have complex life experiences and families. I highly recommend A Good Night for Shooting Zombies. I also recommend you look for Kaline Klatteraster's tree house by Haven Kimmel; Swashbuckler by James Moloney; The Goldfish boy by Lisa Thompson and View from the 32nd Floor by Emma Cameron which is long out of print but well worth finding even though the cover is perhaps not very appealing.
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