Dracula and Daughters: School for Slayers by Emma Carroll – at a glance
The School Reading Lists’ five word review: vampires, school, secrets, persuasion, cure.
Children’s book title: Dracula and Daughters: School for Slayers.
Children’s authors: Emma Carroll.
Genre: Children’s fiction.
Published by: Faber and Faber.
ISBN: 9780571388820.
Recommended for children aged: 9-12.
First published: Paperback September 2026.
This children’s book is ideal for: readers who enjoyed the first book and wants to revisit the city of Temstown and/or enjoy gothic novels. It can also be used to start discussions about secrets, self confidence, and accepting help from others.
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Our review:
After Mina, Buffy, and Bella Dracula helped rid their hometown of a vampire problem, they set up their new business, Dracula & Daughters, which aims to cure host vampires rather than slaying them. The new Guildmaster, however, has decided there is no need for them to exist, as Temstown is now vampire-free!
However, when an obituary reports that the head boy of Poisonwood School, where the sons of the city’s influential citizens go, has died not once, but twice, the girls are sure this is something they should look into! With the school closed for the holidays, there aren’t many students there, but they head to the school anyway to find out what is actually happening. With a deputy headmaster who is ready to send them packing, a new headmaster who seems younger every time they see him, two students in sick bay, and an obnoxious student conducting vampire-slaying classes, things definitely need looking into. It is also snowing heavily and the girls couldn’t leave even if they wanted to!
Working quickly, before more students are infected, they begin collecting clues which seem to once again link to the secrets their mothers have been keeping. They are able to show the students who both help and hinder their progress what they know to be the best way to deal with a vampire problem. Unfortunately, healing the hosts is never enough; they have to identify the source, and that isn’t going to be easy even in an isolated community covered in snow!
Our verdict:
The second in this gothic series starts a few weeks after the end of book one, with Mina, Buffy, and Bella just about to open their new business and immediately being told to shut it back down again! Poisonwood School for Boys, where the great and the good of Temstown send their sons, is at the heart of this story and adds a completely different atmosphere to the more clinical feel of the first book.
By having enough snow to mean the school is cut off from the city (it is in the centre of a lake), the author enables the three girls to carry out their investigation even though girls are strictly forbidden from even crossing the threshold! They are also able to explain and show what they do far more easily, as they are impressing students rather than parents or the new Guildmaster.
Once again, the secrets their mothers have kept are at the heart of this book, and it is clear that this could very well come to a head in the third book in this series.
Teaching points and book club discussion ideas:
- The students still at Poisonwood School over the holidays are there because they haven’t completed all their schoolwork. How would you feel if you had to go into school during the holidays to catch up?
- Buffy’s raven is called Poe. Do you know why this is? If not, look online to find out what the reason is.
- Dracula and Daughters isn’t open for very long before the Guildmaster insists it be shut down. In a cross-curricular activity with art, design a poster you think the girls could have drawn to announce it would be opening for business.
- Percy Seward, who is the son of the Guildmaster, finds letters addressed to the girls in his father’s possession. How would you feel if you were Mina or Percy about this discovery?
- Mina, Buffy, and Bella have found out more secrets about their mothers. What do you think they will say about this when they travel to meet up with them?
Many thanks to Faber and Faber for the review copy.
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