Little Dracula's First Bite ¦ Little Dracula's Christmas

Two pieces of enjoyable nonsense which will attract many a new young reader and many an older reader with a taste for the comic fantastic. A whole Dracula family is here born out of the conventions of horror movies (and the Addams family?) with Little Dracula centre stage.

In First bite Little D. wants to 'fright 'em and bite 'em' just like Dad. He fails miserably and loses two milk teeth in the process. Only at the dentist's does he manage to succeed (or suck blood, rather...).

The Dracula family Christmas is all it should be with paper chains, lots of presents and a man-trap for Santa. The family fails to capture him but Little D. insists, as Mum tacks him up in his coffin bed, that they'll get him next year.

The text, however, is only half the book, probably less in strict proportions. Joseph Wright's illustrations carry on their own stories while developing that of the text. Castle Dracula is peopled by tiny weirdos who ride around in the family's carpet slippers; Big D. wears red Y-fronts; the servant doubles as a yard broom, guinea-pig for Igor and coach-horse; the disembodied hand, known as Handy, gets a fingerless glove for Christmas and so on. Splendid! The book needs poring over by small groups who can ooooh! and earth! in delighted horror at such as the Christmas dinner of fingers, ears and a variety of viscera.

Some may see such sadistic/masochistic goings-on as objectionable. For this reader the overall impression was of good-humoured nonsense. Children were ken for them to go on longer and commented only on things nearest to their own experience -- food, going to the dentist, Christmas presents. Just as Fungus the Bogeyman turns the world upside down, these books leave it a bit bent -- but not, I think, twisted.