Amazon.com (ISBN 0385325916, Hardcover)

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