SCAREDY BAT AND THE FROZEN VAMPIRES (SCAREDY BAT

A quirky vampire detective springs into action when chaos ensues at the Royal Vampire Wedding in Bowman’s supernatural middle-grade mystery.

Twelve-year-old Ellie Spark is half human, half vampire and an aspiring detective; she got the nickname Scaredy Bat because she sometimes turns into a bat when she’s frightened. She’s thrilled when she learns that she’ll be able to attend the Royal Vampire Wedding that’s taking place at her middle school—the first place that allowed both human and vampire students. Human-vampire relations are tricky, and this is a momentous occasion; if the nuptials don’t go as planned, a new prince will ascend to the throne and curtail a number of vampire civil rights. After a mysterious force freezes nearly everyone at the wedding, it’s up to Ellie; her fanged best friend, Jessica; and their new human pal, Fez, to find the cause and rescue vampire-human relations before it’s too late. In doing so, Ellie must battle her arachnophobia. The story is straightforwardly written and cleanly paced, introducing new characters intermittently, injecting doses of humor, and providing Ellie with a simple but effective narrative arc. The discussion of marriage and citizenship rights for vampires is surprisingly timely and operates subtly in the background. The text is supplemented by Lisovaya’s full-color illustrations, which lack depth and finesse but contribute charm all the same; in them, Ellie, Jessica, and Fez are portrayed as White, and Tink, a major supporting character introduced in the novel’s second half, is depicted as Black. This book would do well on bookshelves alongside early chapter book series like David A. Adler’s Cam Jansen (1980)and Jack Chabert’s Eerie Elementary (2014).An appendix includes suspect-list worksheets, trivia, and discussion questions as well as facts about spiders.

A fun and ambitious first entry in a fantasy series about tween investigators.