Mona the Vampire


Mona the Vampire is a children's animated television series that was created by Sonia Holleyman. Mona the Vampire is based on a series of 1990s children's books of the same name that was written and illustrated by Sonia Holleyman and later also by Hiawyn Oram. The series is co-produced by Cinar and Alphanim, with Animation Services for Season 3, produced in association with YTV in co-production with France 3, Canal J and Tiji, with the participation of the Independent Production Fund, the Shaw Children's Programming Initiative, and Telefilm Canada.

Synopsis

The series follows the adventures of Mona Parker, who refers to herself as "Mona the Vampire", as well as her two best friends, Lily Duncan and Charley Bones, and her pet cat, Fang, as they imagine themselves confronting a new supernatural foe, or solving a supernatural mystery, in every episode, but there are always rational explanations for what they see.

Episodes

There are a total of 65 full episodes of Mona the Vampire. Each episode is approximately 20 minutes long, not including the theme song and the credits theme, and each full episode contains two 10-minute episodes. Four seasons of Mona the Vampire were produced. The first season contains 26 full episodes, while seasons 2, 3, and 4 each contains 13 full episodes.

Characters

The following is a list containing voice actors and the characters they voice:
The first public announcement of the production of the television series was in a news article published in June 9, 1998 by the New York City news agency PR Newswire. Before Mona the Vampire, Cinar and Alphanim, two of the series' main production companies, had partnered in several other television series, including Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Lassie. The leaders of both of these companies predicted that Mona the Vampire would be a great success, and hoped to further the relationship between the two companies with this production.

Book basis

Mona the Vampire is based on a series of books of the same name that were each published in the early to mid 1990s and were written and illustrated by Sonia Holleyman, who was later partnered with Hiawyn Oram in the writing of that same book series. Holleyman's original idea of Mona, as represented in her first three Mona the Vampire books, led more towards a girl with a great imagination who, like many children, likes to experiment with multiple different obsessions. However, after Oram joined Holleyman in the writing of the next six Mona the Vampire books, they decided to modify Mona into a character who is solely obsessed with her vampire superhero persona. These ideas later developed into the modern television series.
Additionally, a series of eight picture books and three activity books based on the television series was published in the United Kingdom by Orchard Books in 2001. This picture book series depicts the characters and scenery in a similar manner to the television series. Each of the picture books are based on specific episodes of the first season of the show.

DVD release

During and after the production of Mona the Vampire, several various DVDs containing episodes of the series were published, especially by Cookie Jar Entertainment. These DVDs sometimes included extra features, such as episode and language selection settings and voiced character descriptions by child voice actors. An example of a popular Mona the Vampire DVD is Mona the Vampire: The Complete First Season, released by Mill Creek Entertainment under a deal with DHX Media, a DVD that, as the name states, contains all the episodes of the first season in numerical order.

Reception

According to Community Newspaper Company, Mona the Vampire, along with Cédric and The New Adventures of Lucky Luke, received a wide audience in Canada as well as in many European countries.

Website

On August 29, 2000, after the production of the first season of the series, Alphanim, Tiji, and Cinar created a bilingual Adobe Flash-based website under the domain name . This website included several children's games and activities that included characters and settings from the series. On August 29, 2016, the domain was deactivated, but archived versions of the site still exist.