Twelve-year-old Maya knows a lot about cooking, but not so much about making friends. She has just finished a lonely school year and now her dad’s girlfriend Charlotte is moving in, making Maya worry that she’ll get less of her dad’s time and attention. At least Charlotte is nice. In fact, she’s so nice that she is paying for Maya to go to culinary camp this summer. Finally, things are looking up!
Except that, oops, the camp where Maya ends up isn’t for young chefs-in-the making—it’s for vampires. Camp Dracula is a regular summer camp, with swimming, campfires, and other outdoor activities, except that all the other campers have fangs, don’t appear in mirrors, and drink juice boxes full of animal blood. Maya has no idea what they would do if they realized she was human, so she pretends to be a vampire, too. At first, she focuses on escaping Camp Dracula, but then she finds herself making friends and even doing some cooking in the canteen. Maya is having an excellent summer—but what happens if her new friends find out she’s actually a human?
Summer Vamp is a fun, silly story full of friendship and hijinks. Maya and her friends sneak out at night, get caught in a food fight, and play games like Capture the Bat, which is the vampire version of Capture the Flag. (Cue Maya claiming that not turning into a bat is “part of my strategy.”) There is lots of humor based on Maya badly pretending to be a vampire, her obsession with cooking, the vampire movie “Midnight” (this world’s version of Twilight), and more.
The book also touches on tricky friendship stuff: Maya has trouble speaking up for herself, while her cabinmate Alex keeps accidentally hurting her feelings when she’s trying to connect. As the summer goes on, Maya gains the confidence to try new things, and she and Alex both get better at communicating and being good friends.
The art is colorful and cartoony. The characters have a friendly, roly-poly look with floppy hair and lots of exaggerated expressions. They all have distinct appearances and their own fashion styles, like Maya’s collection of silly food-themed t-shirts. There are fun cooking sequences and yummy-looking food. There are also a few “scrapbook pages” illustrated with cute “photos” of the friends, trinkets and pressed plants, and scrawled commentary. The backgrounds—mostly cabin interiors and woodsy outdoor settings—support the characters well without drawing focus away from them.
The vampires make Maya nervous at first, but there is no real scary stuff in this book. These vampires definitely do not attack humans. There is roughhousing and some very cartoonish violence, like Maya beaning a counselor with a crepe pan, but nobody really gets hurt. A fellow camper seems to have a crush on Maya, but he’s shy and his inability to talk to her is played for laughs. There is no other romantic content, just tween summer camp mischief.
The culinary sequences establish Maya’s passion for cooking, and the vampire summer camp is a fun setting, but the story is really about gaining confidence and learning to be a good friend. Hand it to readers who like silly humor and friendship stories that don’t take themselves too seriously.
Summer Vamp
By Violet Chan Karim
Penguin Random House Graphic, 2024
ISBN: 9780593425220
Publisher age recommendation: 8-12
NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11), Tween (10-13)
