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Reviewed by:
  • Vunce Upon a Time
  • Elizabeth Bush
Seibold, J.Otto; Vunce Upon a Time; by J.otto SeiboldSiobhan Vivian; illus. by J.otto Seibold. Chronicle, 2008; 36p ISBN 978-0-8118-6271-4 $16.99 Ad 5–8 yrs

Dagmar, child vampire, is a vegetarian who supplements the yield of his moonlit vegetable patch with candy. His stash of sweets has run out, but a skeleton buddy apprises him of an approaching holiday, Halloween, when humans give the stuff out for free to anyone in costume. Dismissing a puppy, kitty, or butterfly costume as only mildly creepy, he settles on the one disguise that could send any vampire into cold terror—garlic. When Hallow’s Eve (oxymoronically) dawns, though, the garlic costume has been eaten by moths and Dagmar is forced to go trick-or-treating as his own scary self. The night’s a success: he rakes in lots of sugary loot, teams up with a ghost who turns out to be a little girl, and retires to his coffin to dream sweetly of his new friend. The text is pretty predictable and somewhat drawn out; it’s Seibold’s digital illustrations that are really the main event. His penchant [End Page 95] for humans and animals with big oval heads, billiard-ball eyes, and rubber band limbs translates well to supernatural comedy, with lots of black night and blood red backgrounds and a tipsy architectural style appropriate to a night when spooks wander and all bets are off. There are also plenty of visual delights for careful viewers to ferret out—a Bloodmobile cruising past the cemetery, Yeti popping out of the forest, a Temporary Halloween Superstore that hawks its wares before the Big Day and sits abandoned with a For Rent sign by the time trick-or-treaters hit the streets. When the holiday calls for more giggles than shrieks, Seibold’s world may be the place to be.

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