Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver’s There’s a Zombie in My Bathtub is a Halloween story for 6 year olds about a boy who would rather be terrified than admit it.<\/p>\n
It’s the night before Halloween and Hank has the evening sorted. A film, a bowl of popcorn, his best friend Frankie. Then Ashley turns up with a different film in her bag. Attack of the Zombies.<\/p>\n
Hank doesn’t want to watch it. He tries saying so. Frankie tells him only little kids get scared, and that’s the end of that.<\/p>\n
So Hank sits through the whole thing with his eyes half shut. He crawls under the coffee table and claims he’s looking for a dropped bit of popcorn. During the worst parts he stares at his mum’s painting of a bowl of lemons, until even the lemons start to look like zombies.<\/p>\n
Then comes the longest day of his life. A nightmare on a beach. A very careful look behind the shower curtain. And Nick McKelty, the class bully, wandering round the park pointing out which people are zombies. The old man with the bandage over one eye. The baby in the pushchair. The skinny black dog under the tree.<\/p>\n
Being inside Hank’s head is the whole pleasure of it. You get the cool thing he says out loud and the real thing going on underneath, both at once. He announces that he isn’t scared while his brain is quietly screaming at him.<\/p>\n
The other lovely bit is Papa Pete. Hank’s grandpa takes him off to the library, because he reckons the proper cure for being frightened is facts. And here’s the part that gets you. Hank isn’t really scared for himself. He’s decided zombies go for old people first, so he spends the whole day trying to protect his grandpa without letting on why.<\/p>\n
Nothing here is actually frightening. Every zombie in the book is either a film, a costume out of Frankie’s bag or one neighbour’s avocado face cream. What’s real is the pretending, and any child who has ever gone along with something they didn’t fancy will recognise it instantly.<\/p>\n
One thing to know. Reading is hard for Hank. He jumbles phone numbers, the words slide about on the page, and the story is built on that rather than tacked onto it. Nobody sits him down for a talk about it, which is exactly why it lands.<\/p>\n
If this one goes down well, Emily is up to something again in Fake Snakes and Weird Wizards. She wants Ralph’s Reptile Show at her birthday party, Ralph is booked solid, and Hank ends up a great deal closer to a snake called Ginger than he would like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver’s There’s a Zombie in My Bathtub is a Halloween story for 6 year olds about a boy who would rather be terrified than admit it. It’s the night before Halloween and Hank has the evening sorted. A film, a bowl of popcorn, his best friend Frankie. Then Ashley turns up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10142,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":7648,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Fake Snakes and Weird Wizards","lr_seo_hook":"A boy too proud to admit the zombie film got to him."},"book_tag":[23],"age_group":[31],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[382,619],"class_list":["post-7654","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-funny-books","age_group-books-for-6-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-henry-winkler","book_author-lin-oliver"],"yoast_title":"Here’s Hank – There’s a Zombie in My Bathtub by Henry Winkler & Lin Oliver | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A boy too proud to admit the zombie film got to him. For ages 6+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n