Jam Session! Jampires by Sarah McIntyre

Jam for breakfast, jam on bread.

Lunch and dinner, jam in bed.

Sam is a jam fan. And when it comes to donuts, no goopy glazed donuts for him. His favorite is the jam-filled Berliner.

Full of jam, one night Sam leaves one donut beside his bed for a quick bite when he wakes. But in the morning, he finds only a dry, wizened shell of his Berliner. Bummer!

"THERE'S NO JAM!" YELLED SAM.

"THIS DONUT IS JAMLESS!"

SOMEONE GOT TO THE DONUT BEFORE ME AND SUCKED OUT THE JAMINESS!"

But Sam is not one to take this sneaky jam scam lying down. Taking his deflated donut to the kitchen, he pulls out Mom's Tupperware squeeze ketchup bottle and injects the red stuff back into it through the side-by-side puncture holes. With a wire waste can, he fashions a trap and sets it up to capture the crooks. At bedtime he sets up a stakeout, but eventually falls asleep, until a hullaballoo wakes him up.

"YUCK!"

CLANG!

NOT ONE THIEF, BUT TWO! AND THERE MIGHT BE A GLIMMER OF A FANG!

Yikes! Vampires? Nope. Jampires, caught red-handed, (and red-fanged), and clearly grossed out by Sam's ketchup filling.

Sam is sympathetic with his captives. After all he's a fan of strawberry jam, too. And he feels sorry for the little lost jampires, so far from home. All's well that ends well, as Sam guides the little jampires back home, where they all chow down on some fancy filled donuts freshly made by the grateful jampire mamas, in Sarah McIntyre's sweet rhyming tale, Jampires (Scholastic Press, 2015). Artist David O'Connell provides the cutesy little cat burglars that will have youngsters tickled at Sam's catch in a silly, not-scary story for the spooky season.

I Vant To Dance! Vampirina Ballerina by Anna Marie Pace

It's not easy finding dance classes that fit a night-flying little vampire's schedule, but little Vampirina finally locates a ballet night school that opens by moonlight.

The black practice leotard and tights are her color, but her gauzy cape definitely sets her apart among her pink-preferring partners. Vamparina also hits another snag: it's hard to perfect your plie' pose when you can't see yourself in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors. But our little vampirette, fangs and all, perseveres and looks to be a natural en pointe!

Vampirina gives la danse an all-out Gothic go, building her skills until she is ready for the big recital reveal. Vampirina in her spider-webby costume is a "breathtaking" sight, all right, but when the rest of the corps de ballet suffers an attack of total performance anxiety, Vampirina is primed to take the lead by her family's' support... with just one piece of parental prompting:

"EVEN THOUGH IT WOULD MAKE YOUR GRAND JETE' MOST IMPRESSIVE, RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO TURN INTO A BAT!"

Self-billed author "Countess" Anna Marie Pace and artist "Mistress-of-the-Night" Leuyen Pham combine their dark arts happily in their brand-new Vampirina Ballerina (Hyperion, 2012), which ends in a delightful four-page gatefold which opens to show the entire corps de ballet receiving their "Bravas" after the final tour jete'. A tale for the upcoming scary season which will please young dancers and would-be ballerinas any time.

"The underlying messages are familiar: there are no shortcuts to achieving an ambitious dream, and persistence and a sunny outlook (even when one is a creature of the night) pay off. But seldom have these lessons been expounded with so much charm," says Publisher's Weekly.

The Honeymoon's Over: Jessica Rules the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey

No, the vampire concepts of history, legacy, and birthright didn't hit home until I saw that heritage measured out in stakes.

"Lucius, that is..." Amazing? Unbelievable? Disgusting?

The room was small, but what that chamber lacked in size, it made up for in weaponry. Almost every square inch of wall held a bracket that in turn held a stake, point down, so that the entire room looked like the upper jaw of a great white shark. I felt like I was being eaten alive.

I'm in a museum of destruction.

Lucius stood still and silent, allowing me to explore. So much history--and so much old blood.

And then...my eye was caught by another familiar name, next to the only stake encased in glass.

I turned to Lucius, baffled. "Why is Raniero's stake here? He's alive. He was your best man."

It's hard times in Transylvania. Anastasia (nee Jessica Packwood) has married her vampire prince and is now embedded in an icy castle in the middle of the gloomy, snowy Carpathian mountains, surrounded by spies, conspiracies, double-agent cousins, and more blood than even a newly-bitten vampire princess wants to see...ever!

No sooner does Jessica get settled in as co-ruler of the vampire kingdom than her cool but hot husband Lucius Vladescu finds himself accused of the grisly murder (by stake, natch) of his uncle Claudiu. Nobody at court actually misses Claudiu, mind you, a duplicitous Draculian scoundrel, it seems, but still, that's Lucius' own stake still wet with the victim's blood, and Claudiu's murder must be avenged by destruction of the offending vampire under law.

With her Lucius in the dungeon and no other vampire claimants to the throne at hand, Jessica has to become the ruler and call for the trial of her own husband, confined in a subterranean cell without a bit of blood to drink to keep him sane. Her look-alike cousin Ylenia seems to be auditioning for the job as her new BFF, but the fortifying vintage blood she brings the princess to drink tastes suspiciously evil, even to a relatively new vampire. Being a Mathlete and a recent graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School hasn't prepared Jessica for any of this.

So Jessica does what any vampire princess new to a difficult job would do--she calls up her real BFF Mindy Sue on her pink Motorola and begs her to come over for winter break. Mindy arrives with everything necessary to rescue a vampire princess--dozens of shoes, her rolling carry-on of cosmetics and hairstyling gear, a supply of TastyCakes, and a lifetime of wisdom garnered from reading Cosmo. Whew! Things are in good hands at last. Now the reader can relax!

But hard behind Mindy Sue comes her old boyfriend Raniero Vladescu, sometimes Buddhist surfer/slacker dude, onetime vampire assassin, Lucius' cousin and a potential pretender to the throne. Lucius trusts him, but Jessica is not so sure, and Mindy is on the horns of the dilemma, too. Is Raniero her ex or not? After all, he never offered to bite her, like Lucius did for Jessica, and how's a girl to know if it's true love without that immortality-granting big hickey? Not to mention that he confesses that he already lost his first bite virginity to the sneaky Ylenia. Was it love at first bite, or just a one=night nibble? Mindy, with her chick-lit education, rightfully suspects Ylenia as having her hopes set on making Raniero king and becoming his consort queen in the Vladescu dynasty.

It's a Gothic vampire mystery slash teen love triangle tale that makes the Twilight saga, with its straightforward rogue vampires and werewolves, seem simplistic. Will Jessica finally take up the reins of royalty and really reign over this bunch of unlikable fanged backbiters? The, er, stakes are high in this Draculian saga of happy-ever-after princessville.

Beth Fantaskey's long awaited sequel to the frankly funny (if fangful) first book, Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side, her forthcoming Jessica Rules the Dark Side (Harcourt Houghton Mifflin, 2012), lacks the fang-in-cheek humor of that book's juxtaposition of vampire culture with high school mores, and the grim, however fantastical, situation now facing our heroine drives out much of the wit whenever Jessica and Lucius are on-page. However, Mindy Sue flies in to save the day, bringing a humorous ironical voice to the narrative along with her reticule of coiffure and shoe possibilities, while her hot and cold romance with hottie "Ronnie" (a.k.a. Raniero Vladescu) provides the heat that keeps the reader going through the myriad candlelit crypts, secret subterranean passages, midnight grave-robbing forays, assorted bloody stakes, and the worst in-laws in the history of royal romance. (Sorry, Cinderella!)

If only Princess Diana had had a Mindy Sue on her side!

Fang Ten! Gibbus Moony Wants to Bite You by Leslie Muir

GIBBUS MOONY'S BABY FANGS HAD FALLEN OUT.

HE SMILED INTO THE MIRROR.

THE TEENY TINY TIPS OF HIS GROWN-UP FANGS TWINKLED.

NO ONE COULD CALL HIM THE BABY OF THE FAMILY ANYMORE.

Gibb just can't wait to take his new teeth out for a trial run. "I want to bite someone!" he announces.

Grandpa Waning Moony is on him right away, pointing out that his family are all proud "nectarines," "juice suckers" unlike those, ahem, other unmentionable cousins of theirs. But the littlest Moony can't restrain the urge to bite a neck, even when the neck of a violin turns out to be more toothpicks than toothsome!

In a vampirian sulk Gibby takes himself outdoors to hang out under his favorite hanging around tree, and when he drifts into a dream of succulent sucking, he suddenly awakens to find himself the unwilling object of a trio of human toothies from a toddler's three new teeth. Gibby take refuge in the tree, hanging from his favorite limb to hide his wounded pride, as the new boy next door climbs up to hang from his knees beside him and commiserates.

"WATCH OUT. THAT'S MANDY, MY BABY SISTER. WE CALL HER 'MANDIBLES,'" HE EXPLAINS.

"SHE BITES EVERYTHING!

BITING IS FOR BABIES!" Moe adds definitvely.

Hmmmm! Gib suddenly sees his yen to bite in a totally new light!

Embarrassed, he grabs a apple from the tree and buries his fangs in fruit.

"UPSIDE-DOWN APPLES ARE TOTALLY TOOTHSOME!" SAYS HIS NEW FRIEND.

"FANGTABULOUS!" SAYS GIBBY.

Jen Corace's illustrations are also fangtabulously apropos in Leslie Muir's latest, Gibbus Moony Wants to Bite You! (Atheneum, 2011), a fang fable that is totally on target for the coming scary season. Vampires are always fair game for a bit of farce, and this fangtastic toothsome tale will go down nice and easy with the storytime crowd.

Hold the Garlic! A Vampire Is Coming to Dinner! 10 Rules to Follow by Pamela Jane

YIKES! A VAMPIRE IS COMING TO DINNER!

WHO INVITED HIM?

Nobody is saying, but when a fanged guest-to-be pins his RSVP to the door with a big butcher knife, it's time to pull out the vampire protocol and see what can be done to make sure the, er, proper amenities are in place.

GREET THE VAMPIRE WITH A FRIENDLY HANDSHAKE. VAMPIRES LOVE TO MAKE NEW FRIENDS.

MAKE SURE ALL THE LIGHTS ARE OFF. VAMPIRES LOVE DARKNESS.

There are lots of rules for making a prince of darkness feel comfy, and Pamela Jane's brand-new A Vampire Is Coming to Dinner!: 10 Rules to Follow (Price, Stern, Sloan, 2010) lays out the protocol for keeping a vampire happy, framed in an ornate series of tarnished gold frames. But if this Drac thinks he's in for the kid-gloves welcome, he's in for a rather rude surprise.

Friendly handshake? Well, yeah, if you count a fake hand extended through the mail slot.

Lights off? Dining only by candlelight? Think again. How about a panel of spotlights aimed right into his peepers?

As the reader lifts the flaps beneath each of the ten rules, we see what is really in store for this unwanted and unwonted guest. No garlic? It's time to pull out your favorite cookbook, 1001 Garlic Recipes. No mirrors? How about every room a virtual Hall of Mirrors? A cozy, quiet guest bedroom? How about one with a mariachi band on hand? And if these accommodations don't suit, just throw out the rulebook:

RULE 11: IF THE VAMPIRE CAN'T SLEEP, THROW OUT ALL THE RULES AND HAVE A MONSTER GOOD PARTY!

There's nothing like a rousing finale, and Jane's tale, illustrated in retro-tongue-in-cheek style by Pedro Rodriguez, closes with a last two-page spread which opens to a lively party scene pop-up with the vamp popping the pinata. And after all, it's always better when Dracula satisfies his appetite with those treats! A fun way to spoof the would-be scary vampire character!

There Goes the Neighborhood! Dear Vampa by Ross Collins

To: Vampa
The Ruined Abbey
Lugosi Lane
Transylvania

From: Bram Pire
66 Nostfer Avenue
Harkerville,
Pennsylvania

DEAR VAMPA,

SORRY FOR NOT WRITING FOR SO LONG, BUT WE'VE BEEN HAVING SOME TROUBLE WITH OUR NEW NEIGHBORS.

The new neighbors, the Wolfsons, do have some odd habits, Bram writes. They stay up ALL DAY, lock themselves in at night, and they actually take SUN BATHS! Then, when the Pires politely attend their housewarming party, the appealing blood-red beverages turn out only to be tomato juice. Bram and his sister try to blend in with the Wolfson's guests at their Halloween party, but when they arrive, dressed as a Yankee slugger and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, they find all the others costumed as ghosts, vampires, and werewolves. Not to mention, the Wolfson's pet barks at them constantly.

The final confrontation comes when the Pires transform themselves into bats and slip out of their tower for their evening flutter and the Wolfson kids shoot them down with slingshots.

Little Bram ends his letter sadly:

Mom doesn't think she'll ever be able to risk flying again. Dad says he has had enough. He used some very bad words.

As I write we are moving out. We're coming back to Transylvania to stay with you for a while. Mom asks if you can get the guest crypt ready for us.

Hope this finds you unwell. All my love to you and Vampma.

Lovebites,
Bram XXX

In Russ Collins' Dear Vampa (Katherine Tegen Books, 2009), the tale of these mismatched neighbors is told mostly through the clever illustrations which accompany the wry text. The vampire family is shown only in black and white, with small accents of red: little Bram writes by the light of fat red candles, guttering in pools of crimson all over his dimly lit desk; Bram's sister, costumed as Dorothy, wears ruby red slippers; and their pet monster looks like a bright red octopus gone terribly wrong. In contrast, the typically suburban Wolfsons, are shown in sunny pastels. The Pires, peeking from their black-curtained window, recoil in horror as the swim-suited Wolfsons blithely soak up some rays and cover their ears with bright red earmuffs as they try to sleep in their coffins while the Wolfsons frolic noisily in their sunny backyard.

But nothing is quite as it seems, for, as the Pires load their coffins into their moving van to head back to Transylvania by the light of a full moon, we see the Wolfsons, now transformed into a family of hairy werewolves, watching from their window and saying mournfully,

"It's so hard to find good neighbors!"

Twilight, the Movie: A Review

It's a dream scene for a teen girl. A distant mother absorbed by her new husband, a rather passive, job-obsessed dad befuddled by his new job as parent, no history of boyfriend breakups, not even a long-time girlfriend,--there is nobody on Bella's case. And then she meets an incredibly handsome boy who is irresistably attracted to her very essence and falls in love with her chastely and totally.

Isabella (Bella), a petite, pale girl of unremarkable prettiness, moves in with her estranged father to finish her junior year in a remote, rain-soaked village in coastal Washington. When she finds herself attracted to an incredibly handsome but undeniably strange boy, Edward Cullen, there is no one to warn her of the potentially dangerous relationship ahead of her. Slowly, despite an obvious struggle to the contrary, Edward seems to be preternaturally attracted to her. It is only when he saves her life from a careening minivan in a display of what can only be described as supernatural speed and strength that Bella knows that there is more to this young man than she can possibly imagine.

What she cannot imagine but nonetheless realizes is that Edward Cullen is a vampire and that she is in love with him, body and soul.

This is the plot of the first book of Stephanie Meyer's best-selling four-book series, Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1).

And now comes the movie.

Early reviews are, as one might expect, mixed. Noted reviewer Kenneth Turan, with the disclaimer that he is not and has never been a 13-year-old girl, nevertheless seems to have found merit in the film In his Los Angeles Times review, he describes the film as "...a movie which has been targeted to that demographic with the delicious specificity of a laser weapon.... Director Hardwicke has connected so intensively to the Meyer novel that it's hard to imagine any one else making a better version."

On the other hand, an anonymous teen-aged male's comment makes his case wittily: "Man, this movie sucked."

That remark seems to separate the moviegoers by gender: many teen guys hate it because the vampire Cullens don't bite and suck; the girls love it because they don't.

I found the movie quite faithful to the novel. The fatal attraction, the star-crossed lovers, the classic demon lover theme,--all were there, spelled out clearly, often in the very words of the novel. Cinematography took advantage of the misty, dark landscape of the Olympic peninsula to good advantage, fitting the mood of the film well and lighting the faces of the players extraordinarily. I (admittedly no longer thirteen either) was distracted by the sensation that in lead Robert Pattinson I was seeing a gaunt Elvis Presley on a bad hair day speaking with the voice of a young Marlon Brando, but I'm sure that no one else in the theatre was troubled by that particular presentiment from the past. Likewise, Kristen Stewart's persistent open-mouthed confusion wore on the viewer a bit, but considering that the two young actors carried 98 per cent of the dialogue, they performed reasonably well in sustaining predetermined roles (requiring nearly constant close-ups) with some degree of success.

All in all, for readers of the first book of Meyer's series, the director chose well to adhere closely to the words and mood of the novel. Fans will love this movie for that faithfulness and will doubtless anticipate the sequel, shamelessly hinted at in the final moments of the film.

Daybust!: Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer

I've been grumpy all day as I waited (unsuccessfully) for Amazon to deliver my preordered copy of Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, Book 4), the long-awaited final book in the saga of the star-crossed lovers, Edward the reluctant vampire and Bella the love-besotted human maiden. Well, judging from early reports of readers who did get their copy, Amazon did me a favor.

Except for a few over-the-top fans who report that they l-o-o-o-ved the book, most of the fan reviews have been dreadful. As I write, the book stands at two-and-one-half stars on Amazon, with only 29 five-star ratings and 59 one-star votes. From the tone of many of those comments, a negative star category would have been appropriate for this one.

Most writers lament the lack of character development in Bella, who apparently has Paris Hilton beat in the shallowness department right through to the end. Then there is the problem of internal consistency with the previous books: authors are free to break the bounds of reality in a fantasy series, but readers have a right to expect that they will keep to the parameters they establish for the fantasy world they create. Apparently, Meyers allowed Bella to become pregnant despite the fact that early on she declared it impossible for vampires to give birth. The final issue that many early commenters shared was the downright creepy resolution of Bella's conflicted affection for Jacob (the werewolf) by having him imprint (i.e, bond as eternal lovers) upon Edward's and Bella's infant girl, improbably named Nessie.

I'm really sorry that the book has been disappointing. Heaven knows, the book business needs a blockbuster just now. Although I found the second and third books a bit tedious, I had hopes that Meyers would take Bella's choice--to chose immortality with Edward or to choose her human soul with its attendant mortality--and deal with it seriously. Bella's conflicted feelings at the end of Book 3 foreshadowed such a direction for the final book.

It looks like Stephanie Meyers was willing to break all her own rules to get to that happy ending. Too bad Romeo and Juliet had that fusty old bard writing their last scene!


Note: FYI: A YouTube video review link in the top five of a Google search triggered my security software, which closed and blocked it immediately.

Twin Tryst: My Sister the Vampire: Switched by Sienna Mercer

Olivia Abbott is new in town, and, wearing her best pink skirt and a determinedly perky smile, enters her new middle school to begin eighth grade. Unlike her previous school on the coast, this one is old and ivy-covered, with dark, high-ceilinged halls and dusty black-and-white photos lining the walls. There seem to be a lot more Goth kids here, too, so many that Olivia feels "like a lollipop in a graveyard" among the black-clad students. Still, a pale Goth girl named Ivy gives her friendly directions to the office, and Olivia is happy to find herself in several classes with the strangely familiar-looking girl.

It is only when Ivy and Olivia see themselves together in a mirror in the girls' room that they realize that they look alike. In fact, they are as identical as twins. When they start asking questions, they discover that they are both adopted, have the same birthday and birthplace, and wear identical dark emerald rings from their real parents. Olivia and Ivy are sure they are real twins and can't resist the fun of switching identities. Using makeup to blend their different skin tones and exchanging eye makeup, Ivy pretends to be a bouncy cheerleader wannabe and Olivia becomes a gloomy Goth. "What better way is there for sisters to get to know each other than to be each other?" says Olivia.

While Ivy as Olivia has a power lunch with snooty pep captain Charlotte Brown and the other cheerleaders, Olivia, dressed as Ivy, meets up with Brendan, the boy Ivy has had a secret crush on for years. While the well-coached Ivy, costumed as Olivia, is replying "Re-e-a-a-lly?" to every remark at lunch, the friendly Olivia, as Ivy, meets and accepts a date with Brandon at the mall on Saturday. True to the twin-switch cliche', Ivy turns out to have an important meeting to plan the All Hallow's Eve party on Saturday, and the two decide that Olivia will have to pretend to be Ivy at the meeting so that the real Ivy can have her first date with Brandon.

When Olivia discovers that Ivy and her pale Goth friends are really vampires, new complications arise for the long-lost twins. In standard "double trouble" style, the two now-devoted sisters work through a series of comic complications, switching identities whenever necessary to make sure that Olivia makes the cheerleading squad and Ivy goes to the All Hallows Ball with Brendan by the end of the novel.

This spoof on twin pranks and teenage vampires is light and in good fun (no biting for these tame vampires--just rare hamburgers now and then), and the vampy identity switch makes for an, er, fangciful switch on the usual middle school BF story. My Sister the Vampire #1: Switched (My Sister the Vampire) is followed by sequels My Sister the Vampire #2: Fangtastic (My Sister the Vampire), My Sister the Vampire #3: Re-Vamped (My Sister the Vampire), and My Sister the Vampire #4: Vampalicious (My Sister the Vampire).