VAMPIRE GIRL CONQUERS THE NIGHT

A young vampire who fears the Night (read: the dark) tries to do something about it.

Vampire Girl—who has ivory skin, a black topknot, and Mr. Spock–like ears—“dreams of conquering the Night,” depicted as a crescent-moon-faced shape-shifting figure. Vampire Girl sees the Night outside her window and calls out to her, but it’s fruitless, as “the Night is everywhere. / She hides in the barking of a dog, / at the bottom of a glass, / in the scribbles of a sleepless young man.” The Night is a trickster who “sheds small bits of herself” that Vampire Girl goes about collecting in a sack: There’s “a pillow sprouting fangs, two unanswered questions,” and so on. Eventually, Vampire Girl meets the Creatures of the Night, who could pass for middle-school-aged trick-or-treaters and who say that her “Dark Night of the Soul is missing,” but by this point readers will have come to understand that this is neither a Halloween story nor a traditional fear-of-the-dark tale but something far more unusual. Sticking with blacks, whites, somber purples, and soft oranges, Ruiz Johnson gamely and gracefully captures everything that González throws at her, including Vampire Girl’s effort to “catch” the Dark Night of the Soul after it springs from her mouth (it resembles a fuzzy black tadpole). Originally published in Spanish, this surreal story will resonate with mature kids and adults.

Strangely beautiful fare for precocious nyctophobes and -philes.