VAMPIRE ISLAND
by Adele Griffin
The author of the Witch Twins series leans toward Addams Family–style comedy in this tale of three vampire siblings trying, with mixed success, to make a go of it in New York. The bats in their ancestry being fruit bats rather than the more usual kind, the Livingstones are supposedly vegetarian, but Maddy can’t seem to get over snacking on bugs and ticks as she spies on new neighbors who just might be vampires of the more conventional, carnivorous, sort. Meanwhile, her sister Lexie is so wrapped up in mooning over popular classmate Dylan that she’s oblivious to the oddities of another classmate, Pete, and Hudson, the youngest, has embarked on a decidedly unpopular campaign to make his fourth-grade class more environmentally aware. Giving each of the three distinct traits and sets of supernatural abilities, Griffin switches point of view from chapter to chapter, trots the plot to a climax in which Maddy earns her golden Slayer pin with help from the others, then closes with a hilariously macabre housewarming party and, along with other backmatter, a (relevant) cookie recipe. Fans of Angela Sommer-Bodenburg’s Little Vampire tales will happily sink their teeth into this one. (Fantasy. 10-12)