Amazon.com Review
What if your Dad loved books, owned a bookstore, and even called his cherished volumes "my little bookies"? You would probably despise books--just like the young protagonist in Eric Sanvoisin and illustrator Martin Matje's deliciously bizarre story
The Ink Drinker. One summer vacation, while the boy is working in the store and hoping shoplifters will ease his burden, he spots a weird, pale stranger drinking a book. With a straw. As soon as the ink drinker flees (at the sound of the boy's gasp), the young spy locates the customer's book and discovers that it is completely blank except for a letter or two! Like a real detective, he races out of the store on the heels of this tough customer... all the way to the cemetery... all the way into a vaulted monument shaped like an ink bottle... all the way to a pen-shaped casket where the man (or beast?) lies snoring. As the book-vampire's mysteries unfold like a good novel, we are no longer sure whether the boy is awake or asleep, or whether the boy could possibly have fallen prey to the strange fellow's powers. "As I sucked the first words of the second paragraph, the lights were suddenly turned on. Dad was there. I swallowed wrong, and the words got stuck." Young readers will adore this eccentric tale of the power of reading, which surprises and delights on many levels. (Ages 9 and older)
--Karin Snelson
From Publishers Weekly
In this mildly sinister chapter book from France, a strange breed of vampire sucks the black blood of literature. The narrator, who hates reading but observes customers in his father's bookshop, discovers the ghoul. From a shelf, the boy watches a "weird looking guy, with a gray complexion and bristly eyebrows" placing a drinking straw between the pages of a book. Afterward, the young spy inspects the volume: "I was struck by its incredible lightness.... There wasn't a single word left on the pages!" He confronts the vampire in an inkwell-shaped mausoleum, swoons and wakes up at Dad's bookshop with a mysterious craving for a literary fix. Sanvoisin plays upon the sensual experience of reading. The narrator's father, an insatiable reader, "devours [books] like an ogre"?metaphorically speaking. The vampire confesses, "Bottled ink is as bland as salt-free food. But ink that has aged on paper, well, it's the ultimate gourmet dish." And the boy, bitten by "Draculink," rationalizes his thirst like a stricken Victorian hero. Matje provides evocative images of the fiend, whose bruised skin and jet-black eyes are the product of his habit. This story asserts that books offer adventure to those who don't fancy themselves scholars, offering up a contrast between studious father and inkthirsty son. A slim but diverting tale. Ages 8-12.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
