Little Vampire Does Kung Fu!
Gr. 4-7. Sfar is a French cartoonist whose comics offer easy-to-love characters, preadolescent body humor, fillips of Jewish folklore, and plot lines that move as swiftly as gray-faced Little Vampire, his red cat, and the human boy Michael can travel through space. In this oversize comic book, Michael is being bullied, so Little Vampire takes him home to an alternative world of monsters with oddly varied anatomies and varying degrees of kind hearts. Their first stop is a visit to Rabbi Solomon, who sends the friends off to learn kung fu from a book, which opens into a world of monkeys and a kung fu dragon. After numerous mix-ups andPow,Slam, andBangconfrontations with and among the various monsters, the bully gets a book bag on his head and Michael has a new protector--pretty Sabrina. Richly colored and hand lettered, this Little Vampire story is a wonderful starting place for American kids to discover the fantastic possibilities of contemporary French comics. The humor is a bonus that makes the tale even more attractive.Francisca GoldsmithCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved