The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell

The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell by Mira Grant

When I read Feed, the first novel of Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy, I amazed by her world-building and her storytelling. As I read the final two novels and the accompanying novellas, I fell deeper in love with the world Grant had created. After reading the latest novella, The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell, I think Feed is only the second-best thing she’s written. This, I believe, is Mira Grant’s masterpiece. What sticks out to me more than anything else is the author’s bravery. This story, short as it was, was beautiful and bold and terrifying and sad. It is what the horror genre should be, what the originators of the craft sought.

The protagonist, Elaine Oldenburg, is a character readers of the series already know as Blackout’s Foxy. In that novel, readers neither liked nor trusted her. In The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell, we learn all we need to know about how her history. In the novella, Elaine is a first grade teacher in the post-Rising Pacific Northwest. Just imagine the possibilities of first graders in the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse. And remember that I praised Mira Grant’s bravery. And now I tell you this story features the single most heartbreaking scene I’ve ever read in fiction.

Yeah, this was great.



A+