I’ll try to continue nightly posts through the end of the week, then I’ll have to come up with a new schedule, because I now have to actually leave my house and be productive most days. A tragedy.
Kellie’s Diary is exactly that. It’s the diary of a 3rd grader named Kellie. There are actually two ways to read this story. It’s presented first as her handwritten pages, then in plain type if the pages are too difficult to read. I read the plain-type version.
Kellie was away at her grandparents’ for a while, and only just came home. Everything is fine at first. Then kids start getting sick, and even teachers. Once they get sick, they don’t come back to school.
Kellie ends up trapped in the bathroom of her school. A bunch of creepy people came in, and she ran away. She was stuck there overnight. Eventually she works up the courage to run to the cafeteria and get more food, since she only had her lunch in her bag. She stays in the school a little longer before running to a tree she always climbs.
She almost gets bitten as she runs to the tree. She doesn’t know what kind of monsters they are. She makes her way slowly back to her home. She stops by a friend’s house for a little while, but the friend’s mom chases her and trips down the stairs. Kellie borrows some food from them too.
There’s no one home when she gets there. She’s still relieved to be home, even if she’s still really worried. The next book picks up from there.
I like the idea of seeing the zombie apocalypse through a kid’s perspective. The misspellings and such add a little more realism to it. There are some things that make her seem a little younger than she is, but that happens.
Unfortunately, I feel like the handwritten version (after a quick skimming) was not really used to its fullest potential. Kids doodle in the margins, and leave little side comments, and get peanut butter and tears and whatever else on the pages. But the handwritten version was exactly the same, with a different font, essentially. Wasted potential.
