From My Reading Chair…
Teeth? They are weird. Children’s teeth are especially weird. Full stop.
(Seriously, do NOT google ‘children’s teeth X-ray’ unless you are fully prepared for the nightmares that follow…)
Losing your first tooth is a fundamental childhood event: sometimes funny, sometimes gross, but always memorable. Fangs, however, are pretty fundamental to a vampire’s entire identity. So what happens when a growing vamp loses one?
Kelly Leigh Miller answers that particularly toothsome conundrum in the GORGEOUSLY illustrated I Love My Fangs!, taking a universally shared rite of passage and elevating it into a spooky new realm.
As both author and illustrator, Miller creates a picture book in which the words and pictures perform different parts of the comedy. The text remains clean and direct, giving younger readers a reassuring path through the story, while the illustrations get up to all sorts around it, carrying much of the extra comedy.
Straight off the bat (no pun intended!) the cover, jacket and endpapers are adorable. Seriously, I cannot get over how gorgeous these characters are! Miller’s rich illustrative imaginings bring warmth and whimsy to the whole fang-losing crisis, with each new page offering another tiny visual treasure to discover.
The family-trait gallery wall, Dracula’s bedroom and THOSE pyjamas?! Deceased. Swoon.
Then there is the mirror scene, the juice-box moment and THE SLIPPERS! Together, these details turn the book into a layered spooky-comedy treasure hunt: immediately accessible to little monsters, but packed with enough visual humour to keep their resident groan-ups entertained through the inevitable rereads.
A story of a charming little vampire facing an all-too-familiar childhood rite of passage. Fangtastic. Immediately added to The Nook!
Creep On Reading, Pumpkins!