Something sticky this way comes in the creepy-cute, humorous picture book Vampire Jam Sandwich by Casey Lyall (A Spoonful of Frogs), illustrated by Nici Gregory (Where's Speedy).
The reader is greeted by a gap-toothed elfin child with a blond cowlick shining a flashlight on his face. A tabby cat looks on. "Would you like to hear a scary story?" The child narrates a scene in which a shadowy vampire--"possibly named Terrence"--takes a bite of a jam sandwich under the assumption that the flowing red jam "was... something else." "You know what a bite from a vampire means," the narrator hints as an alert eyeball pops up on the bitten sandwich's upper slice. The Vampire Jam Sandwich rises, oozing red jam between its now-fanged crusts. "It's a cursed creature of the night," the narrator warns as the sandwich ransacks kitchens searching for "MORE JAM!" But there's a way to keep your jam safe, the narrator advises a small child in a nightgown: hide all the jam jars in a box marked "No Vampire Jam Sandwiches allowed," spelled "T-E-R-R-E-N-C-E." One page-turn later, two shadowy figures depicted sneaking the box out of the house are shown to be the cat and the narrator himself, revealed as the fanged, be-caped vampire--jampire?--of the legend.
Lyall's playfully unreliable narrator leaves the audience to interpret the goings-on through Gregory's red-on-sepia pencil and digital illustrations, which give the proceedings a soupcon of early horror cinema glamour. This delicious addition to the ranks of gently spooky picture books belongs on the shelf alongside the likes of Creepy Carrots and Go Away, Big Green Monster. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager, Allen County Public Library