Middle School Bites: Night of the Vam-Wolf-Zom,P A+ highly recommended

Reluctant reader boys need a skeleton key. It’s that mythical thing that could unlock anything, but in this case, we just need to get them to enjoy reading. Thus, it’s a bit ironic that Middle School is the closest thing that we’ve seen in recent memory for those elementary-aged reluctant readers. Night of the Vam-Wolf-Zom is the fourth book in the Middle School Bites series and it has every element that grades four through six require in their reading.

• Night of the Vam-Wolf-Zom is funny. The book maintains a constant smile and exudes readers to laugh out loud at times. It follows Tom, who is a typical kid except he was bitten by a vampire, a werewolf and a zombie. Because of this, he’s able to have the knowledge, strengths, and weakness of each one of them. Show me a kid who doesn’t like one or is curious about one of those monsters and I’ll show you the reflection of a vacant mirror….which just might be a vampire.

• The book’s chapters are the perfect length. Each chapter is around five pages long, with many of them having an illustration or two to accompany them. The font is also larger than most mglit books and has more space between the lines. That, plus the relatively short chapter length is combined with text that’s on target for fourth graders. They’ll be able to read a chapter by themselves during one ten-minute sitting. Those older readers will be able to read more than one chapter easily.

• The kicker for those readers who need to increase their stamina or reading comprehension is that they’ll be able to understand more. Initially, they’ll wonder about a Van-Wolf-Zom and how they got to be that way, but within a couple of pages that will give way to pure enjoyment.

• Night of the Van-Wolf-Zom is ridiculous. It’s a very silly book that mixes in action with absurdity, jams in humor with friendship, and a sense of mystery and a quest into the story arc.

In Middle School Bites: Night of Van-Wolf-Zom Tom has caught the scent of the zombie that bit him. He’s flying after the camper van in his bat form and is shocked to see a very friendly, although thoroughly zombified zombie named Dusty. Dusty is being kept prisoner in a traveling carnival of sort and dreams of one day living in a mythical place called Zombie Nirvana. Dusty even shows Tom the map that he’s kept all of these years with a big X on the place.

Thankfully, it’s not too far away so Tom hatches a plan to free dusty, get to Zombie Nirvana, and help out with the school play. It’s possible the most difficult thing could be the latter, which features a kiss that the lead actor has to do to his leading lady.

As you can see, there’s nothing about a school play, a potential first kiss, Zombie Nirvana, a possible gathering of vampires, a pending full moon and two love-struck friends who come along with Tom to free his zombie friend that upper elementary school students would like. Of course, I kid, this book, in addition to all of them that we’ve read in the Middle School Bites series demands the attention of that age.

It does so in a way where kids will want to read it. They’ll laugh at the concept of such a silly monster. The older readers will know it’s far too silly but relate to Tom going weak in the knees when he has to do the kiss over and over. Everyone will grin at the sight of a zombie wearing a mask and walking around with a regular kid and a vam-wolf-zom with his hood up. Those upper-elementary school students may not realize it, but Middle School Bites is going to be one of the best times they’ll have engaging in a book series until they high upper middle school.

Night of the Vam-Wolf-Zom is fun, effortless reading. The only thing that could make it better is if Tom somehow became a skeleton, which would complete the metaphor that I had when this all started. This is great, age-appropriate reading for ages eight and up that will have them looking at the calendar while they wait for the next installment in the series.

Middle School Bites: Night of the Van-Wolf-Zom is by Steven Banks with illustrations by Mark Fearing is available on Holiday House and distributed by Penguin Random House.

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