VAMPENGUIN

When the Dracula family visits the zoo, a surprising swap makes for a silly adventure.

This is a true picture book, with text and illustrations so seamlessly woven together that one won’t stand alone without the other. While at the penguin exhibit, the youngest member of the Dracula family discovers their resemblance to a similarly sized and colored emperor penguin. The two switch places, and readers are the only ones who catch this detail; the Draculas continue on their way through the zoo without ever noticing. This little inside joke succeeds thanks to Cummins’ striking and strategic palette. Using black and white with shades of aqua, mustard yellow, and pale pink, she makes it easy to see how the littlest Dracula camouflages with the penguins. Little readers will love pointing out all of the things the text intentionally omits, like the animals that notice the penguin touring around in the Draculas’ stroller. Cummins uses classic vampire tropes in a way that lands right with the preschool crowd: They frown when they should be smiling and hang upside down, for example. The Draculas all have truly paper-white skin; other zoo visitors and its employees are racially diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Impeccable integration of text and illustrations makes for a book readers can really sink their teeth into.