Mona the Brilliant - Hardcover

Entrepreneurs learn a lesson or two from a resourceful young artiste in Holleyman's saucy follow-up to Mona the Vampire. When Mona decides her beat-up old bike needs replacing, she and her devoted cat, Fang, raise cash by opening a beauty salon. Mona puts on her "special hairdressing clothes" and hangs up hand-painted advertisements. "For a small fee paid in advance, I will transform you!" she promises her unsuspecting friends as Fang looks on with a gleam in his eye. The industrious girl's makeovers are effected with a cake-decorating kit, shaving cream and other supplies ("Mona was amazed by all the wonderful things she could do with a hair dryer and a bar of medicated soap"), but Mona's "brilliance" frightens her less daring customers, whom she ties to chairs lest they run away. Holleyman's illustration style is not unrelated to Babette Cole's: if Holleyman's compositions are slightly less fluid, she shares Cole's penchant for gangly, wide-eyed eccentrics and vibrant colors, and her work, like Cole's, exudes an irresistibly rakish charm. Ages 5-9.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.