The Zombie Stone (Zombie Problems, Band 2) - Softcover

Buch 2 von 3: Zombie Problems

Campbell, K. G.

 
9781101931622: The Zombie Stone (Zombie Problems, Band 2)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1101931620 ISBN 13: 9781101931622
Verlag: Random House Children's Books, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

From the acclaimed illustrator of Flora & Ulysses comes the second book in the Zombie Problems trilogy, heralded by School Library Journal as "reminiscent of Roald Dahl in uniting the macabre with realism."

What's worse than discovering you have a zombie problem? Acquiring four more undead tag-alongs. . . .

When a zombie followed August DuPont home one day, he didn't expect her to stick around. But Claudette is in no hurry to leave August's side. And when he decides to go to Croissant City in search of the elusive Zombie Stone, Claudette joins him. It's a good thing she does, because no sooner had August set out than a mysterious white alligator began to follow him. Reptiles aren't the only creatures to look out for, though.

When August is reunited with his dour cousins the Malveaus, and their menacing mother, Orchid, finding the stone before they do takes on a new urgency. Throw in a swamp doctor, a costume parade, a pop star, a séance, a band of smugglers, and four new zombies, and you'd better believe that August's quest is only going to get more complicated.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Keith G. Campbell was born in Kenya, but raised and educated in Scotland. He graduated with a master's degree in art history from the University of Edinburgh. After trying on several careers, Keith eventually returned to his early passion of writing and illustrating stories. He is the author-illustrator of several picture books and the winner of two Ezra Jack Keats Awards. A Small Zombie Problem was his first work for older readers.Keith lives in Malibu, California. Learn more at kgcampbell.com and follow him at @artbykgcampbell.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One
 
It had become apparent that the canoe was sinking.
The opaque brown water, which had moments before been sloshing around the boy’s shoes, had now reached his ankles.
“Claudette!” cried the boy urgently, pointing toward the largest of several spouting holes. “Stop that up with your finger!”
The girl named Claudette, however, must surely have been stronger than she realized. For while attempting to plug the gushing water, she promptly forced her entire fist through the vessel’s hull, dramatically worsening the situation, as you might imagine.
The boy scrambled across the canoe to stuff the jagged gash with a plaid blanket. But within moments the wool was a saturated lump, the “repair” worthless, and, in the meantime, the other leaks were worsening. Indeed, with every second, there was more and more water, and less and less canoe.
As wet coldness reached his knees, the boy finally came to understand that the boat was doomed. Yet even then, he did not fully appreciate the dire nature of his predicament.
There was, however, someone who did.
One hundred feet above the foundering vessel, an osprey was headed back to its nest and family with a freshly caught bass. The bird observed the splashy drama far below with a detached curiosity, as you or I might observe some feathery misadventure in the sky above.
The male human, just visible through a cloud of tasty-looking butterflies, had removed his oddly netted helmet and, for some reason, was using it to toss around water. The female human—who moved like a thing living, but to the bird above smelled like a thing dead—was with cupped hands awkwardly attempting to do the same.
Humans, the osprey mused, were an odd bunch. What the frantic pair were trying to achieve he could hardly imagine. But what he spied next, the osprey understood only too well; for every creature of the swamp is hardwired to recognize the most dangerous of predators.
Through the watery channel, just beneath the surface, moved the pale shadow of a white beast. So enormous was it, that the osprey dropped its family’s dinner in shock. The thing was wider than the vessel was long, and its powerful, snaking tail created a wake like that of a shrimping boat.
And the white, enormous, snaking beast with a powerful wake was rapidly advancing upon the sinking canoe.
 
Chapter Two
But before we discover the plight of August and Claudette DuPont (for such were the names of the children in that ill-fated craft), we must return to the previous day, when the events leading to this remarkable situation began in a pretty unremarkable way.
August DuPont popped his head around the kitchen door, where his aunt Hydrangea was counting bottles of DuPont’s Peppy Pepper Sauce into a cardboard box.
“Eleven, twelve, thirteen,” muttered the wide-eyed lady in the pink tiara. She cast around the kitchen table, then, skirts rustling, turned entirely around, scanning the room. “That can’t be all. It surely can’t be all. I could have sworn . . .”
“I’m just heading outside, Aunt,” August announced, “to fertilize the pepper plants.” Hydrangea, distracted, was conducting a recount.
“Is it,” she inquired absently, “the right time of year for such a measure, sugar?”
August slid a book into the lady’s line of sight.
The volume was rather old, of the hard-backed variety that was printed before the invention of dust jackets. Its elaborate title and cover decoration were embossed and gilded, but the edges were fraying, the leaf wearing thin, and the pages were scarcely held together by the spine.
“It is the right time,” August assured his aunt, donning long, bulky gloves and a netted beekeeper’s helmet, “according to LouLou Bouquet.”
Wistfully, Hydrangea placed her fingers on the book.
“Now, where,” she wondered, “did you ever find this old thing?”
“It’s been helping to prop up my desk,” responded August.
“The one with the broken leg. I noticed it a while back, when I was looking for a pushpin on the floor.”
Hydrangea lifted the volume.
“The Capsicum Compendium,” she read. “A Practical Pocket Guide for the Professional Pepper Planter.” She looked up. “You know, sugar, that in over one hundred years, no one has produced a more learned or reliable manual on pepper farming? Or so my papa would say. He regarded Miz Bouquet’s authority on the subject as absolute. So did his papa. And his.”
She handed the book to August, a faint crease in her brow.
“And now you pick up the torch; the last of the DuPonts. Perhaps you, August, can one day revive the family hot sauce empire. Have I ever told you that DuPont’s Peppy Pepper Sauce was once the most highly regarded—”
“—hot sauce in the world?” August had heard this speech so many times before, he could finish it verbatim. “From Croissant City to Paris, France. Fiery yet sweet. Like a dragon’s kiss.”
Hydrangea laid her hand on the boy’s cheek and smiled sadly.
“I’m glad to see at least,” she said, “that LouLou Bouquet is being put to more fitting use than supporting broken furniture.”
Awkwardly, as he was holding a book in his gloved hand, August heaved a generously sized sack of fertilizer from the kitchen floor.
“Now remember, sugar,” said Hydrangea. “No further—”
“I know, ma’am,” interrupted August, shortly. “No further than the gate.”
“Can’t you content yourself, child, with the yard?” Hydrangea’s voice had an injured air of appeal. “It’s true that Locust Hole is not the place it once was, but it is by no means a small property. There is fresh air, a canal to fish, trees to climb.”
The lady pursed her lips.
“You may well roll your eyes, August. But let us not forget that your last misadventure into the cruel world has left us with ongoing”—lowering her voice, she glanced at the ceiling “consequences.”
In the foyer, August stopped to slide LouLou Bouquet’s compendium under his bag-wielding arm, thus freeing a hand to open the front door. As his gloved fist slid over the smooth brass he paused, recalling the very first time he ever turned it, eight months before.
Only eight months had passed since the boy had stepped beyond the threshold of his house for the first time. He glanced at the wood plank barricades resting redundant against the foyer wall, and recalled lifting them from their brackets, gingerly so as not to alert his high-strung
aunt.
So petrified was the lady, of butterflies and betrayals and almost everything else in the world beyond Locust Hole, she had sought to keep her nephew safely cloistered within its walls.
Sliding through the front door and closing it firmly behind him, the boy crossed a screened-in porch and navigated voluminous net curtains to arrive at the crisp spring air and sunlight beyond.
The bag of fertilizer landed with a dull thump in the dirt of a planter, beside some weedy green shoots, the yard’s only living plants. The circular flowerbed lay at the center of a geometric pattern that had once represented an Italian garden. But the small hedges defining the paths had long since perished, the gravel was thin and scattered, and the Grecian urns lay prone and broken.
Swatting aside three butterflies that had immediately fluttered into orbit around him, August crouched and examined a seedling, lifting a limp leaf.
“No fruit yet,...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Random House Children's Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1101931620
ISBN 13 
9781101931622
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
288
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
22763
Deutschland

Weitere beliebte Ausgaben desselben Titels

9781101931592: The Zombie Stone (Zombie Problems, Band 2)

Vorgestellte Ausgabe

ISBN 10:  1101931590 ISBN 13:  9781101931592
Verlag: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2021
Hardcover