If you read only one DICK AND JANE title in your adult life, make it DICK AND JANE AND VAMPIRES. Even though it’s from Penguin’s Grosset & Dunlap young readers’ imprint, it might creep out little kids. Big people, however, will groove on its strange vibe of humor, and hell, when’s the last time it took you three minutes to read 144 pages?
For this full-color primer, Laura Marchesani sticks to the series’ simple-sentence-only structure, i.e. “Look, Jane. I will get the ball. I will get the red ball.” It even uses original Dick and Jane illustrations from the 1940s and 1950s, but now with 100 percent more vampires, sometimes not even acknowledged by the other characters. The effect is odd and hilarious, not to mention a tad disturbing. Thank you, Ms. Marchesani — we’re all for subverting impressionable young minds. —Rod Lott
Related posts:
- Whores: An Oral Biography of Perry Farrell and Jane’s Addiction
- The Vampire Book / A Practical Guide to Vampires
- The Hotel Dick
- Jane Is My Co-Pilot: The Fine Art of Making SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS
- The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula
