The No Brainer's Guide to Decomposition

2025 Lone Star Reading List

​

From Pura Belpre honor-winning author Adrianna Cuevas comes The No Brainer's Guide to Decomposition, a spooky middle grade novel that follows Frani as she fights to stop the undead from rising at her father's body farm laboratory- that is if she can embrace the true nature of her brain and its adhd

​

No one has ever called Frani Gonzalez squeamish. Seriously, whether it’s guts (no big deal), bugs (move aside she’s got this), or anything else that you might find at the Central Texas Forensic Anthropology Research Facility, to her and her dad, the university’s body farm is just home.

Having bodies buried in her backyard doesn’t exactly make Frani the most popular kid in school, and the spider that lives in a web in her brain isn’t helping either. Arañita’s always to blame for the distracted thoughts weaving through Frani’s mind. But when a hand reaches out of the ground and grabs her ankle, Frani realizes that she’s got bigger problems.

Not everything is as it seems at the body farm, and now Frani must help the teenage zombie that crawled out of the dirt … all before he gets too hungry. But as more and more zombies begin to appear—and they seem to get less and less friendly—can Frani embrace the true nature of her brain and count on new friendships to solve the body farm's mystery before its overrun with the undead?