Vlad the Rad

A skateboarding-obsessed vampire’s lack of interest in all things frightening irritates his headmistress in this tale by the illustrator of the Uni the Unicorn books. “Why can’t you be more like your classmates and eerily float to class? Or ooze down the hallway quietly?” the founder of Miss Fussbucket’s School for Aspiring Spooks asks as Vlad skates through a throng of students (two demons, a cyclops, and a black cat among them). Vlad’s whizzing skateboard earns repeated reprimands and casts him as a “show-off” and “Bad Vlad” among his classmates. Finally, on a field trip to a museum, Vlad impresses the entire school by combining spookiness with skateboarding, zooming down a dinosaur skeleton and terrifying the other patrons. The single-note antagonism wears a tad thin throughout, but outré pictures of Vlad’s classmates and over-the-top facial expressions should elicit chuckles. Ages 3–7. [em](July) [/em]