Mona the Brilliant

Entrepreneurs learn a lesson or two from a resourceful young artiste in Holleyman's saucy follow-up to Mona the Vampire. When Mona decides her beat-up old bike needs replacing, she and her devoted cat, Fang, raise cash by opening a beauty salon. Mona puts on her ``special hairdressing clothes'' and hangs up hand-painted advertisements. ``For a small fee paid in advance, I will transform you!'' she promises her unsuspecting friends as Fang looks on with a gleam in his eye. The industrious girl's makeovers are effected with a cake-decorating kit, shaving cream and other supplies (``Mona was amazed by all the wonderful things she could do with a hair dryer and a bar of medicated soap''), but Mona's ``brilliance'' frightens her less daring customers, whom she ties to chairs lest they run away. Holleyman's illustration style is not unrelated to Babette Cole's: if Holleyman's compositions are slightly less fluid, she shares Cole's penchant for gangly, wide-eyed eccentrics and vibrant colors, and her work, like Cole's, exudes an irresistibly rakish charm. Ages 5-9. (Aug.)