A contaminated water supply, a mysterious glowing substance, and orphans who are suddenly developing an appetite for wood give Zombie Zoo a wonderfully strange mystery to solve. Melanie Abed pairs thirteen-year-old aspiring naturalist Felix Fizzystyxx with the instinct-driven Ninja, creating an investigative duo whose very different ways of noticing the world may be exactly what the island of Tub needs. With science, pattern recognition, and sharp observation woven into the supernatural trouble, this first Felix & Ninja adventure gives its young sleuths more to confront than zombies alone.
Upper Middle Grade
Date Published: 09-15-2026
Publisher: Oculus Print
ZOMBIE ZOO is Book 1 in a five-book middle grade adventure series for readers ages 8-13, blending paranormal mystery, zombies, unlikely friendship, and STEAM-powered problem-solving.
To find a cure, Felix must team up with Ninja, a shadow-dwelling orphan who trusts her instincts and never backs down. Intense and razor-sharp, she notices what others overlook and lives up to her name as the island's most mysterious sleuth. With their eccentric mentor Doc Brunne compromised and the town's water supply contaminated by a glowing bioluminescent substance, the two mismatched investigators must combine scientific observation with sharp intuition to stop the outbreak before their island home is devoured.
Featuring diverse protagonists, quirky humor, spooky-but-fun scares, and strong female and male leads. ZOMBIE ZOO is ideal for reluctant readers and fans of Max Brallier's The Last Kids on Earth, B.B. Alston's Amari and the Night Brothers, and Goosebumps. Comprehensive educator resources-including discussion guides, vocabulary lists, STEAM extension activities, and printable maps-support classroom use, library programming, book clubs, and make this title ideal for cross-curricular lessons bridging ELA, STEAM, and SEL.
The most interesting part of Zombie Zoo may be the way its mystery depends on two very different kinds of intelligence. Felix approaches the outbreak as an aspiring naturalist, relying on observation and scientific thinking, while Ninja notices details through instinct and intuition. Neither approach is treated as enough on its own. Their investigation brings biology, chemistry, bioluminescence, water systems, and pattern recognition into a mystery involving a deliberately unleashed plague, giving the STEAM elements a direct role in solving what is happening on Tub rather than separating them from the adventure.
The premise also gives young readers an unusually playful entry point into those ideas: the problem is not simply a zombie outbreak, but a population of wood-eating zombies threatening an island town. Beneath that oddball danger is a story about two orphan outsiders learning to trust someone whose strengths look very different from their own.
Young readers who like their mysteries a little weird and their scares balanced with humor should find plenty to explore here. The wood-eating zombie outbreak provides the supernatural hook, but Felix and Ninja's investigation gives the story its distinctive shape: one young sleuth thinks like a budding scientist while the other relies on sharp instincts and an ability to notice what others miss.
The combination should also make Zombie Zoo especially interesting for families, librarians, educators, and book clubs looking for fiction that can open conversations about scientific observation, problem-solving, friendship, identity, courage, and learning to trust across differences. The supplied educator resources—including discussion guides, vocabulary lists, STEAM extension activities, and printable maps—extend those possibilities beyond the story itself.
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Zombie Zoo has an appealingly peculiar problem at its center, but the more intriguing idea is how Felix and Ninja have to solve it. A naturalist watching for evidence and a mysterious sleuth trusting what others overlook are not obvious partners, and that tension gives Melanie Abed room to connect scientific inquiry with instinct, friendship, and the experience of being young people whose concerns may be dismissed by adults. Add a contaminated water supply, glowing bioluminescence, and wood-eating zombies, and the island of Tub has quite a case waiting for its newest investigators.
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