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    Zombie Baseball Beatdown
    Unavailable
    Zombie Baseball Beatdown
    Unavailable
    Zombie Baseball Beatdown
    Audiobook6 hours

    Zombie Baseball Beatdown

    Written by Paolo Bacigalupi

    Narrated by Sunil Malhotra

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In this inventive, fast-paced novel, New York Times bestselling and Printz Award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi takes on hard-hitting themes--from food safety to racism and immigration--and creates a zany, grand-slam adventure that will get kids thinking about where their food comes from.


    The zombie apocalypse begins on the day Rabi, Miguel, and Joe are practicing baseball near their town's local meatpacking plant and nearly get knocked out by a really big stink. Little do they know the plant's toxic cattle feed is turning cows into flesh-craving monsters! The boys decide to launch a stealth investigation into the plant's dangerous practices, unknowingly discovering a greedy corporation's plot to look the other way as tainted meat is sold to thousands all over the country. With no grownups left they can trust, Rabi and his friends will have to grab their bats to protect themselves (and a few of their enemies) if they want to stay alive...and maybe even save the world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 10, 2013
    ISBN9780804121538
    Unavailable
    Zombie Baseball Beatdown
    Author

    Paolo Bacigalupi

    Paolo Bacigalupi is the bestselling author of The Windup Girl. Between them, Bacigalupi and co-author Tobias S. Buckell have either won or been nominated for the Locus, Hugo, Nebula, Compton Crook, and John W. Campbell awards.

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    Reviews for Zombie Baseball Beatdown

    3.5/5

    56 ratings14 reviews

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    • 4/5
      It begins with strange smells from the meatpacking plant while middle schoolers Rabi, Joe, and Miguel are playing baseball. And as you might have guessed from the title, there are zombies. It's a fun little zombie romp, but it also has a lot to say about race and immigration and economics. And it doesn't try to guilt/scare you into becoming a vegetarian, which I appreciated. I like books that can say Big Things about Big Topics without making feel like I'm being lectured to. It still has plenty of funny moments, and no dull ones. Definitely a worthwhile read, especially for younger readers.
    • 3/5
      The Zombie Baseball Beatdown is certainly not as dark as any of Bacigalupi's adult novels, or even as the dystopian Ship Breaker. Even so, it carries on the theme that giant corporations are inimical to human survival, and that society treats minorities poorly at best. Heavy ideas, but written at a level appropriate to a pre and early teen audience, along with a healthy dose of zombies and humor.Rabi, Miguel and Joe are the uncool-kids at school and on their baseball team. Rabi is the half-Bengali nerd, better at figuring odds and plans than the coach, or even most intelligent adults. Miguel is the kids of illegal Hispanic immigrants, looked down on by the racist owners of the meat-packing plant, and their racist kids. And Joe is the totally weird, unpredictable, and fiercely loyal kid from the dysfunctional and abusive family.Together they discover that the local feedlot & slaughter house has created zombie cows, that in turn create zombie people from anyone who eats the tainted meat. Because you don't so much kill a zombie cow as you just grind it up into bits that can't attack. Leading to a wonderful scene with a dead-but-animate cow head stuck like a trophy on the front of a stolen pickup.Of course the kids rally (most of) their baseball team, beat back the zombies, mostly save the day, and survive. But not everyone makes it. As Bacigalupi says in his introduction"People who figure out how to work together across differences survive the zombie apocalypse. Racists get eaten."Not a bad moral.
    • 3/5
      Bacigalupi taking his causes to the younger adult crowd, using a boys' adventure tale structure, with villains supplied by a large meat packing business and the US immigration authorities. And when I say "boys' adventure tale," that's in 1950's sense. There's nary a girl in sight nor any discussion of them, just a lot of bicycles, baseball, and bullies. The zombies are straight out of cliche, groaning "Braaains" at the drop of a limb. It's not bad but for this age group, I'd recommend Pinkwater and Pratchett instead.
    • 3/5
      If there's one thing I'm gathering from my reading this year, it's that Iowa is the fictional hub for some weird s*** goin' down in America. I think it's the corn.

      I was curious to see whether a middle grade zombie book could actually be achieved, and Bacigalupi delivered. The zombie thing *does* take quite a bit longer than expected to really get going though, and in the meantime, Bacigalupi ties in food/animal ethics to make the whole scenario believable and meta. He also discusses white privilege in a poignant way, especially in light of the particular events of the past three days. It's true, it can feel heavy-handed at times, at least as an adult reading this, but I think it could be a great conversation starter for a grade schooler/middle schooler. The reader was pretty fun as well...we really need more POC audiobook readers.

      My detractors were the slow-ish plot and the extent to which cliched phrases were used (I started narrating the thing myself). Also, holy cats. Where this book excels at racial/ethnic diversity, it is woefully negligent of gender parity. Mothers/aunts are literally out of the country almost immediately, and one girl takes up the fight for, like, a sentence at the end. Guess girls don't really have a stake in this, huh.
    • 3/5
      Narrated by Sunil Malhotra. More of a 2.5 star rating. Zombie fans will enjoy all the gross action if not be put off eating beef forever, lol. Even accounting for it being a kids' book, I found it too simplified. "If we all work together, we can do anything!" Also, how is it that no adults have figured out the truth about the Milrow meat-packing plant even after the national guard was called out in the epilogue? Again, kids won't notice the gaps but for me...ehhhh.
    • 2/5
      Listened to audiobook and recommend Sunil Malhotra as a great voice actor.
      Enjoyed the racially diverse trio of friends and narrator Ravi's acumen with baseball stats. The treatment of illegal immigrants, meat-packing workers, the industrialization of food, and the plight of cattle raised for consumption are all worthy subjects, but the heavy-handed exposition tended to bog the story down. Done better was the premise that zombie cows came as a result of questionable hormone and antibiotic injections and once infected, quickly spread the disease to people. While the cover screams comedy, this is a middle school morality tale and readers looking for a purely fun, fast-paced zombie adventure may be disappointed.
    • 4/5
      Ground zero for the zombie apocalypse is a beef slaughterhouse. Underlying the humor and the zombie stuff is some wonderfully witty, sharp commentary on factory farming, government regulation, corporate greed, racism, and undocumented immigrants.
    • 4/5
      When I read Scalzi's "The Big Idea" piece on it, it sounded interesting, but I didn't intend to pick it up. Except I saw it on my library's eBook catalog, so I thought, what the heck. It sounded like fun. Paolo says he wrote the book as a fun thing without much pressure. There aren't any literary techniques. He just tried to make a fun book for boys about zombie fighting, without many themes and motifs. I think the themes are actually more prevalent than he makes light of. There's a prominent thread of foreigners/bigotry in here. Moreso than the zombies, which are actually lacking. Those expecting something like "World War Z" or "David Wellington" will be disappointed.That being said, the novel does achieve what it seeks out to. It's a beach read, not too heavy except for the racism themes, and some fun gross-outs.
    • 4/5
       Delivered on what it was sold to me as - an easy read zombie book about the evils of factory farming, big corporations, and America's position on immigration.
    • 4/5
      Zombie Baseball Beatdown by Paolo Bacigalupi is a gory story of killing zombies, so I'd put it in science fiction.Rabi is our narrator, Joe is our white guy, and Miguel is our Mexican-American from an illegal family. They are all on a baseball team with a bully named Sammy, who has several friends. Rabi is a math genius and knows that their baseball coach knows nothing about baseball. Rabi can figure the stats and likelihood of the team winning with the batting order as Coach Cocoran has it, and it's not good. Basically, the team loses regularly, Rabi is blamed often because he ends up as the cleanup batter, which he can't do, and Sammy wants to beat Rabi up for losing. To avoid getting beat up, Joe, Rabi, and Miguel go to a public park by the town's meat packing plant. No one will bother them there because it stinks at this gorgeous park. Sounds like a typical school novel. So wrong! While playing baseball, suddenly the smell is different and it's REALLY BAD. Miguel's parents were reported to the immigration authorities and were deported, so he now lives with his aunt and uncle. His uncle says that the meat packing plant in the town does some weird things. Suddenly Miguel's aunt and uncle are gone--Sammy decided to get even with the guys, so he called immigration on Miguel's family, as Sammy is the son of the meat packing plant owner. Miguel figures he'll hide out with Rabi at his house, as Rabi's parents are out of town. On the drive to Rabi's house, Coach Cocoran sprints out of the corn. He's a zombie and wants to eat their brains.I liked this novel except it's very hard to eat any form of meat after reading it. The author does make many political comments within this crazy, fun zombie-killing fest. The boys have to kill zombies, keep Miguel away from immigration, get even with Sammy, and save the non-zombies from becoming zombies while going against the power of the meat packing political chicanery and the threat of immigration doing more to Miguel's family. You can ignore the politics and just enjoy the story very easily.
    • 4/5
      Bacigalupi has a crusade to share his distrust about genetic modification and other issues with the food industry and global warming and has written adult and YA books with those themes. In this book, he is taking on the meat packing industry remniscently of Upton Sinclair's, The Jungle.Rabi (an Asian Indian whose mother comes to his games in a bright yellow sari), Miguel (son of illegal Mexican immigrants), and Joe (son of an abusive alcoholic dad) are friends and teammates on their baseball team. They go to an empty lot next door to a meat packing plant to practice hitting when an overwhelmingly horrid smell engulfs them and they see people fleeing the plant. The next thing they know they are being chased by their coach who is now moaning "Brrraaaaiiiiinnnnsssss" and won't die even with a caved in skull. But wait! The cows are moaning in their own way, too, and attacking each other. Is this the zombie apocalypse?Miguel's parents are scooped up by ICE and deported, Rabi's mother goes out of town, and Joe's parents are not dependable so the future of the world rests on these three young heroes. What an adventure!Read by Sunil Malhotra (who has no problem with the Indian accent), some of the voices he creates are cartoonish but he does them well and I found myself echoing his "Brrrrraaaaaiiiinnnssss" in the car listening to him.Probably best enjoyed by tween-aged boys.
    • 3/5
      Yes, it's about zombies. But it's also about bullying, meat and its byproducts, and illegal immigration. Surprisingly good for what it is. Great for an older reluctant reader.
    • 3/5
      Rabi, Miguel, and Joe have long been friends and underdogs. They all play on the same baseball team. While Rabi is a good strategist, he's just not that great of a player. The three are bullied and teased by Sammy and some of their other teammates. When Rabi's mom has to travel to India, he stays with his friend Miguel's family. When Miguel's guardians are deported to Mexico thanks to a visit from ICE. The boys are on their own to fight against a zombie outbreak in their town that seems to be originating from some shady dealings at their town's meatpacking plant.
    • 4/5
      I’ve always thought that Middle Grade must be the hardest category in which to write. It needs to appeal to such a narrow niche in such a narrow way, and the author has to be able to come up with just the right blend of silly and grown-up for that very volatile age group. Paolo Bacigalupi manages to get it just right.His hero is 13-year old Rabindranath Chatterjee-Jones, called Rabi by his friends, who lives in a company town dominated by Milrow Meat Solutions, a processing plant making beef to feed people in seven states. The bully on his middle school’s little league team is Sammy Riggoni, whose father owns Milrow’s. Sammy keeps trying to pick fights with Rabi and his friend Miguel, whose parents were booted first out of Milrow’s and then the country for being illegal immigrants. Miguel now lives with his aunt and uncle, who also work at the plant. Rabi, Miguel, and their “all-American-looking” friend Joe are practicing baseball out a field behind Milrow’s (to avoid the bullies on the regular field) when they discover an awful secret about the meat at the packing plant. The feed has become toxic from all the additives and chemicals given to the cows to increase production, and suddenly, some of them have turned into zombies. Moreover, anyone who gets bitten is turned into a zombie as well. But it doesn’t appear that Milrow’s is going to change their practices - in fact, the boys discover Milrow’s is still trying to distribute the tainted meat!Can the boys stop them in time, and save the world from zombie-dom?Discussion: Bacigalupi takes some subjects bound to appeal to kids, like little league baseball, comic books, bullying, fitting in, determining right from wrong, and zombies, and puts them into a political and social context so that the book is not only entertaining, but educational.Moreover, his hero cleverly employs (and teaches the other kids about) an Aesopian rhetorical strategy to get around censorship: in this case, to subvert the legal strictures against exposing wrongdoing by the local meatpacking plant. Rabi explains:"The thing I realized while we were talking at the lawyer’s table was that Milrow Meat Solutions would sue us to death for telling the truth. ...They’d make all kinds of trouble about the truth. They really could take away our house and all that kind of stuff, but there was one way, maybe, they couldn’t. And that’s if we made the whole thing up. So here you’ve got this book in your hands, and I’m telling you - straight up and down - that I made this whole story up.”Evaluation: Sometimes Middle Grade books are just too silly for me, but Bacigalupi (a National Book Award finalist) held my interest throughout. And I lovehow he teaches kids about some very current and important issues (such as immigration policy and genetically modified food) in ways that never seemed forced. But he also weaves in a theme important to his other books: what makes you human, and what makes you a monster, and how can you choose to be the former rather than the latter?