The Last Kids on Earth by Max Brallier

Hey, Story Seekers!

The world has ended.

Zombies are wandering around.

Giant monsters have taken over town.

Most of the adults are gone.

On the bright side, nobody seems particularly worried about bedtime.

The Last Kids on Earth is written by Max Brallier and illustrated by Douglas Holgate. It's the first book in a series about thirteen-year-old Jack Sullivan and the very strange life he builds after the Monster Apocalypse.

Jack has a tree house.

Not a normal tree house.

This one has catapults, a moat, video games, scavenged snacks and enough apocalypse upgrades to make me wonder what this kid could have accomplished if somebody had simply asked him to clean the garage.

If you're new to Book Explorers, I'm Jungle Jimmy the Book Explorer, children's author, dad, and longtime performer for kids. Along for the expedition is Readit the Book Worm, my childlike sidekick.

Readit would like the tree house.

He would not like the zombies.

Fair distinction.

Book Breakdown

Forty-two days after the Monster Apocalypse hits Wakefield, Jack Sullivan is surviving alone in his tree house.

And Jack has decided there's only one reasonable way to handle the end of civilization.

Treat it like a video game.

He invents Feats of Apocalyptic Success for himself. He battles zombies. He scavenges supplies. He cruises around town in a vehicle called Big Mama. And he's particularly interested in defeating Blarg, an enormous intelligent monster who appears to have taken a personal interest in him.

But Jack doesn't stay alone.

First Quint, his brainy best friend and inventor.

Then Dirk, the school bully, who turns out to be considerably more useful once there are actual monsters around.

There's Rover, a gigantic monster who becomes Jack's pet and transportation.

And there's June, the girl Jack is determined to rescue.

One small problem.

June isn't sitting around waiting to be rescued.

She's been surviving too.

That matters more than it first appears. Jack sees himself as the hero of his own apocalypse game, and the people around him keep declining the roles he's assigned them.

Meanwhile the monsters keep coming.

Douglas Holgate's black-and-white illustrations are everywhere. Some show the monsters. Some explain inventions. Some punch up a joke. Some make Jack's imagined video-game achievements look considerably more impressive than they probably felt while a zombie was trying to eat him.

This is not a graphic novel, despite occasionally being called one.

It's an illustrated novel.

There is a lot of prose here.

But Holgate keeps interrupting it with creatures, diagrams, expressions, action and visual payoffs, which for a kid making the jump into longer books is a monster-sized handrail.

For teachers and librarians: Viking published the original hardcover on October 13, 2015 at 256 pages, ages 8 to 12, grades 3 to 7, Lexile 650L, with the current edition listing Fountas & Pinnell T. AR BookFinder and TeachingBooks agree on ATOS 4.1, 21,916 words, quiz 178677, 3 points. Note the paperback has a different page count, so check the edition if you're matching a set.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

This is the book I wanted at the far end of a third-grade shelf.

Not because every third grader should independently read a 22,000-word novel.

They shouldn't.

Because some are ready.

And some aren't quite ready but will attempt it anyway, because the cover has a giant monster on it.

Never underestimate the educational value of a giant monster.

Brallier gives those readers a great deal of help. Jack talks directly to us. The chapters keep moving. There are goals, fights, monsters, jokes, inventions and pictures waiting everywhere.

The story keeps handing the reader a reason to get through a few more pages.

That's different from making the reading easy.

ATOS puts this at 4.1, which means a third grader reading it alone is stretching.

Good.

Stretching is fine when the kid wants to know what happens next. That's the whole trick, and it's why I'd rather hand a motivated third grader a 4.1 than a bored one a 3.0.

I also like what happens underneath Jack's video-game version of the apocalypse.

At first he's busy becoming the hero. Achievements to unlock. A monster to defeat. A girl to rescue.

But surviving alone turns out to be much worse than building a group.

Quint brings brains.

Dirk brings muscle.

June brings herself, thank you very much.

And Jack slowly has to make room for the idea that being the hero of the story doesn't turn everybody else into supporting characters.

That's useful ground for kids, and Brallier mostly lets it run underneath the zombie slime instead of stopping to make a speech about it.

One warning for grown-ups. There's monster violence, zombie danger, plenty of gross material, a lot of destruction, and some boy-crush behavior from Jack that a number of readers have found dated or irritating.

Know your kid.

This is horror with training wheels. The zombies are still zombies.

Readit's Review

I would live in the tree house.

Before you say anything, I would put up MORE walls.

And maybe no moat, because what if you fall in your own moat?

That's embarrassing.

Rover is my favorite.

He's huge, he's a monster, and Jack gets to ride him.

I would pick Rover over Big Mama.

Also Jack keeps doing these Feats of Apocalyptic Success like he's inside a video game.

If it really were a video game, I would want to know how many lives you get.

Because one life is not enough when Blarg is chasing you.

And June does NOT need Jack to rescue her.

He needs to stop saying that.

She was already surviving without him.

I would still join their team.

But I'm not fighting Blarg first.

Dirk can go.

He's bigger.

What Others Think

This is where the reluctant-reader case gets interesting.

Goodreads has the first Last Kids on Earth at 4.14 out of 5 from 19,306 ratings. The recurring positives are action, monsters, gross-out humor, the illustrations, and kids wanting to keep going.

One parent described asking her eight-year-old to read one to three chapters aloud during homeschool. After the first chapter he wanted another.

Then another.

He read the whole book that day and immediately asked for book two.

That's one family, not a study. But it is exactly the reader behavior this book is engineered to produce, and it shows up again and again in the reviews.

Other readers keep pointing at Holgate's illustrations as the reason a longer story feels approachable, particularly for kids arriving from comics and graphic novels.

The professional reviewers noticed the same thing. Kirkus starred it and singled out the marriage of text and illustration. School Library Journal starred it too, calling out the laughs, the gross-out material and the character work underneath the monster fighting. Booklist specifically recommended the video-game structure, quick dialogue and artwork for reluctant readers.

There are real criticisms.

Some adult readers dislike Jack's early attitude toward June, particularly his habit of treating rescuing her as another achievement to unlock, and a crush described in terms that can read as possessive.

I noticed it too, and I'd rather say so than skip it.

The saving grace is that June refuses to cooperate with Jack's fantasy. She's capable before he turns up and she stays that way. That doesn't erase every awkward line, but it does hand kids something worth spotting: the hero telling the story is not automatically right about everybody else in it.

For a third or fourth grader, noticing that is a genuinely good day's reading.

Belly Laugh Scale

4 out of 5: Big-Time Belly Laughs

There's plenty of comedy here.

Jack treats an actual apocalypse as though somebody handed him the world's greatest video game. Zombies become obstacles. Survival becomes an achievement system. An enormous monster becomes a pet.

Then Holgate keeps jumping in with another creature, expression, diagram or visual gag.

The gross material helps. Slime has enjoyed a remarkably successful career in children's literature.

I'm stopping short of five because the book has a second job besides making you laugh.

It wants action. It wants danger. It wants you genuinely wondering whether these kids survive the next attack.

The comedy keeps the adventure light enough for younger middle-grade readers, but it shares the driver's seat rather than owning it.

Strong four.

Final Explorer Verdict

I'd hand The Last Kids on Earth to third through fifth graders who love monsters, zombies, video games, action, illustrated novels, gross humor, and books that look substantial without being a solid wall of text.

I'd especially keep it for the kid who is devouring graphic novels and is nearly ready for a longer prose book.

Don't make that kid give up pictures.

Give them more words and pictures.

Holgate's artwork isn't decoration sprinkled on after Brallier finished. It's part of the pacing. It hands the reader another monster to inspect, another joke to catch, another breath before diving back into prose.

That's why it belongs at the top of this range.

Dog Man gets a reluctant reader moving.

The Bad Guys moves them toward chapters.

Dory Fantasmagory asks for more sustained prose.

Wayside School pushes past 20,000 words in short, survivable episodes.

And The Last Kids on Earth says:

Okay.

Ready for a bigger adventure?

Here come the zombies.

Readit has already retreated to the tree house.

Probably smart.

Until our next expedition, keep exploring those books.

Jungle Jimmy & Readit