Dracula Spectacular

This book is great fun. Beneath the sparkly cover lies a thoughtful message about learning to love differences and being yourself.

A little boy is born to a glum and gloomy vampire home; the parents are overjoyed to have a little vampire boy but then they realise that their baby is not quite the same as them. They try to teach him how to be scary and to ‘sneak and to creep’, ‘But the Dracula child just giggled with glee, Then asked all his teddies to join him for tea.’ Whatever they try to do he really loves colour and sparkle and doesn’t want to scare people away. The problem comes to a head when the Dracula child is told to scare a little girl and he finds her hiding under her bed. However, it isn’t the boy she is scared of but dark itself so he is able to show her that dark can be wonderful. (I liked the nod to one of my favourite all time books The Owl Who Is Afraid of the Dark here). But he has to leave before he sees the sun rise.

When he returns home he is upset and becomes sadder and sadder but his parents think of a lovely way of cheering him up and everybody changes the way they look at things.

The rhyme in the book makes it great to read aloud the illustrations will encourage reading independently. It’s a unique way of celebrating differences, accepting each other and being ourselves and is definitely worth a read.