Vlogger and actor Miles McKenna will make his picture book debut later this year.
Little Bee Books and LGBTQ+ nonprofit group GLAAD will publish McKenna’s I Am NOT a Vampire, illustrated by Riley Samels,next year, the press announced in a news release.
McKenna began posting videos on YouTube in 2011 and came out as transgender in 2015. His YouTube channel currently has 1.15M subscribers, and he has 888,000 followers on Instagram.
As an actor, he has appeared in the series Guilty Party and All Night, and he currently stars in the Disney+ and Hulu series Goosebumps, based on R.L. Stine’s book series, as James. He is the author of a previous book, Out!: How To Be Your Authentic Self, published in 2020 by Abrams; a critic for Kirkus praised it as “an updated coming-out guide that’s fun, fresh, and incredibly useful.”
I Am NOT a Vampire, Little Bee says, follows a boy who is raised in a family of vampires, but is not a vampire himself. He longs to transform into one of the creatures, and while he does change, it’s not in the way he had expected.
In a statement, McKenna explained the origins of the book. “I asked to be a vampire in the first grade, but on Halloween night I felt so wrong in my big black wig and gown that was bought for me,” he said. “I didn’t know why those feelings were there. The following year, in second grade, I asked again if I could be a vampire. My mom reminded me that I was a vampire the year prior. I corrected her and said, ‘I want to be a boy vampire!’”
I Am NOT a Vampire is scheduled for publication on May 6, 2025.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
