Hubie Cool: Vampire Hunter

by Mike Thaler, Jared Lee (Illustrator)

Being a vampire hunter is tough work. Hubie always smells like garlic. He has to stay up all night. And his mom is always telling him to stop playing with is steaks even that's the only way to take care of a vampire! But when Hubie comes face-to-face with Count Dracula, will all of his training pay off?

Genres: Childrens

64 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2015

About the author

Mike Thaler, born in Los Angeles, started his professional career drawing cartoons for adults. A children's book editor saw one of his cartoon stories in a national magazine and encouraged Mike to try writing for children. His first attempt met with success, and "The Magic Boy" was published in 1961.

Mike has produced over 220 published books and is known as “America’s Riddle King.” He has also been called “The Court Jester of Children’s Literature.”

Mike Thaler lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife Patty. He gladly welcomes all invitations to do church and school programs, and other book events.

Mike travels each year throughout the world helping children and teachers create their own stories, riddles, and books. He writes and teaches with creativity, inspiring his audiences with a love of language.

--from the author's website

Reviews

[Dolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a special edition story in the Black Lagoon Adventures series of early chapter books by Mike Thaler and Jared Lee. With short chapters, big font and lots of pictures, these books are just marginally more challenging than the original Black Lagoon series of picture books by the same author/illustrator team. In fact, I think I like the picture books better, but these books are fun, too.

This book features Hubie Cool as he daydreams about being a vampire hunter. His misperceptions and misunderstandings about vampire lore are funny. There are a lot of groan-worthy, punny jokes, too.

This was a fairly similar storyline, compared to the picture books we've read. It's entertaining, silly and short. I always enjoyed reading the original picture books together with our girls, but it just didn't have the pull or drama for a typical chapter book and it lacked the colorful illustrations of the picture books. Still I think it will appeal to elementary school-age chikdren.

[R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a tad hard to follow where reality blurs into dreams out outright daydreams that are a mix of reality and imagination. It's all in old comic black and white format as well, making some of the line art seem blurred together with everything going on at once and all of the text to try and follow it. Regardless, it's clear Hubie has a lot of imagination and a bit of an obsession with vampires.

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating and feedback provided by my 9 year old son. He enjoyed the vampire topic and thought the book was funny, but it lost rating for being so short. He wished there was more to the story. He did want to keep the book and read it again. So maybe more of a 3.5 star rating.

[Anna Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tried for SAYL reading in 2025

This was a very confusing story of Hubie vampire hunter and his hunt for Count Dracula. Does he just have a running dream as a vampire hunter throughout his day. At school, at home, day and night his dream overlaps his actual activities.

[Mosley · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first few pages of silly puns were amusing but then this book kind of just turned into one really bad dad joke after another.

[Kristin Hundt · Rating 4 out of 5]

We enjoyed it very much. -Nolan 7 years old

[Shankar B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked when Hubie went to Dracula's castle.