I don’t know if you’ve seen Nosferatu, but I have, and can attest that it’s some freaky Dracula knockoff business. Yet despite my distaste for horror, I recently read Bram Stoker’s original.
I don’t have an e-reader, but I do have a Kobo app linked to my mom’s account on my phone and I frequently download free classics because awesome. Free classics! I read them on the subway when I forget a novel. But I digress. Dracula! It gave me the creeps even on a brightly lit subway car. Then one night I couldn’t sleep and I thought reading might help so I got through two tiny cell phone size pages before realizing this is an AWFUL idea and now I’m going to have nightmares. So explain THIS:
I’m all for getting kids into books and reading and classics early on, and I know that many original fairytales involve death and misery that were conveniently edited out of the Disney versions. But Dracula and his minions prey on children! Then they cutesy him up and plunk him on a board book! Why!
It’s billed as a “counting primer” which oddly enough brings to mind the equally fanged but much more loveable Sesame Street Count: One castle, ah ah ah…two friends ah ah ah…
At least there’s two until DRACULA EATS ONE OF THOSE FRIENDS. Sort of. He at least (spoiler) bites her neck and transforms her into a child-preying monster, ultimately forcing her former fiancé and other suitors who all remain friends and grieve together to hunt down her lusty physical form, chop off its head and fill it with garlic, saving her soul.
So…it’s a happy ending? But I just think kids should hit grade school before they’re introduced to blood-sucking demons.
Yeah, vampires give me the creeps too! I think my kids need to be bit older before they read about Dracula, but there are other kids (around ages 4-5) we know that love all kinds of monsters. Each child is different.