English Bookclub - April 17, 2021 - "Where's the dragon?" and "Interview with the vampire"

Hello, everybody!
Last Saturday, the 17th of April, we were allowed to meet again "in person" at the Calais library for our monthly English Bookclub meeting, with a limit of 6 people (we also had a Skype connection as well, for the people who couldn't and didn't want to joint). The previous meeting (March 2021) had been canceled because of the Covid lockdown #3.
5 people were here in person (Katherine, Thierry, Isabelle, Célia and myself), and 4 on Skype (Léna, Arthur, Elodie and Charles).
1) Katherine Currie, local writer living in Calais, presented her first book, called "Where's the dragon? Où est le dragon?", which is a bilingual book for children, that she illustrated herself. The story is: three little mice arrive in Calais to meet the Calais' dragon, but they have to look for him in all the different typical places of Calais. Its repetitive structure makes it a very good tool for beginners, in primary schools for example. We also had a glimpse at her second book "The pretty lace star / La jolie étoile en dentelle", and at the sketches of her futur third book, all bilingual.
2) The second book was "Interview with the vampire", a book written in 1976 by Anne Rice, an American writer from New Orleans, Louisiana. Most of the characters are French, as the story starts in New Orleans in 1791, and the inhabitants were French at that time, and speaking French. The literary style is gothic horror, gloomy and dark, and the book is divided into 4 parts:
- In the first part, the main character called Louis, a plantation owner, meets an vampire called Lestat, coming from Paris, who offers him to also become a vampire. Louis accepts because he's quite fed up with his life at that time, but discovers that he doesn't want to live with Lestat because he's arrogant and sadistic, and keeps on hurting his feelings. Louis is about was about to seprarate from Lestat, but Lestat creates for him a vampire daughter, Claudia. But she will also end up being fed up with Lestat, and Louis and her leave New Orleans.
- In the part 2 they go to Romania, and they discover that the vampires there exist, but for some reasons are brainless.
- In the part 3 they spend some time in Paris (France), and meet some vampires, who are intelligent, but sadly decide to murder Claudia.
- In part 4, Louis travels the world, then decides to come back to New Orleans, meets Lestat again, and then wanders depressed, and meet a journalist in San Francisco, who asks him to tell him about his life.
Isabelle had read the book because one of her students wrote a memoir for his master degree about it (and the evolution of the figure of the vampire throughout literature), and I had read the book around 20, because it is the universe of a game we used to play with co-students, called The Masquerade.

The next meeting is on Saturday the 15th of May, 2021, 10am to 12, at the Calais library (16 rue Pont Lottin), the subject is Sherlock Holmes.

Hello, Steph, hello everyone!
Tx for your comments. I have bought the first two  books written by Katherine for my grandchildren. The first one is interesting because it allows the children to discover Calais in a fun way because the dragon hides in the places to be discovered. For the little ones it is like a game and it makes them want to continue reading. I used the second one with my 4 and a half year old granddaughter who can't stay in bed during the night and is always bothering her mum. Every time she is good I give her a gold paper star.
I have seen the film "Interview with a vampire" with Brad pitt and Tom cruise but have not read the book