‘Vampire Dog’ is sweet tale

Celebrate this spooktacular season by popping in a DVD of “Vampire Dog,” and you may find it’s just the ticket to getting your whole family howling with laughter. There’s nothing scary about the pooch in question, Fang (given a hilarious, sarcastic voice by “Saturday Night Live” alum Norm MacDonald). Instead, Fang delivers one-liners and sage advice to his owner, a tween named Ace (Collin MacKechnie), who needs all the help he can get as the awkward new kid at the Lugosi Public School, where the monsters are the “cool” students, who tease, bully, and put down the academic achievers.

Don’t worry, parents — despite the moniker of “vampire,” Fang is not a blood-thirsty hound, but rather a red-gelatin-dessert-craving canine, who happens to have an allergic reaction to direct sunlight. Although the sweet-toothed pooch catches the eye of mad scientist Dr. Warhol (Amy Matysio), there’s a happy ending for the boy and his dog. The tale, directed by visual effects expert Geoff Anderson, is followed by comic bloopers and outtakes.

“Vampire Dog” DVD, $14.98, www.amazon.com.

The Weekday School at Riverside Church

A progressive, play-based, independent early childhood school serving families with children ages two through five. A diverse community fostering sharing, understanding, and respect while focusing on the social, emotional and physical development of each child.

Manhattan Mandarin

Manhattan Mandarin runs the Mandarin after-school programs at over 40 schools nationwide, including St. Bernard's, Chapin, Allen-Stevenson, and Buckley. Whether in schools, students' homes, in the office, online, or on our beloved China trips, our teachers and tutors have helped hundreds of students of all ages master the Mandarin language on their own unique paths to fluency. Our philosophy has always been to make private lessons and classes perfectly tailored for each individual student. We look forward to working with you. - Jamie Keyte, Founder

The Language Workshop For Children

After offering both group and private lessons for many years and analyzing the results over&nbsp;time, The&nbsp;Language Workshop for&nbsp;Children, founded&nbsp;in1973, has decided&nbsp;to emphasize private remote lessons at shorter intervals.&nbsp;Our skilled educators&nbsp;will&nbsp;focus their attention exclusively on the&nbsp;unique needs, learning style, and interests of your child.&nbsp;This allows a&nbsp;bond&nbsp;to develop&nbsp;between teacher and student, which&nbsp;has been&nbsp;shown to&nbsp;drastically improve retention.&nbsp; OUR METHOD&nbsp; Developed by the pioneers of language education for children, our programs bring decades of&nbsp;experience to your living room with individualized, active language classes. Each lesson is based on proven methods and materials perfected to capture your&nbsp;child&rsquo;s attention during the ages when he/she absorbs information the fastest. &nbsp;&nbsp; While other online language classes rely on videos for passive learning, we deliver interactive, and engaging lessons with native-fluent teachers. In addition, all our teachers are certified in the Thibaut&nbsp;Technique which has been featured&nbsp;in the New York&nbsp;Times, the&nbsp;Wall Street Journal, and many other well-respected&nbsp;publications.&nbsp;&nbsp; Our short one-on-one lessons give kids the chance to focus, hear pronunciation clearly, and practice speaking in their target language.  THE PROCESS&nbsp; First, students have a short meeting with our Director&nbsp;Francois&nbsp;Thibaut, in&nbsp;English, with&nbsp;their parent(s)&nbsp;present.&nbsp;Mr. Thibaut&nbsp;will determine&nbsp;the best course of study, including&nbsp;class length and&nbsp;frequency, the&nbsp;right&nbsp;teacher, lesson&nbsp;format and materials (or action games for younger students.) Then the learning&nbsp;begins!&nbsp;Mr. Thibaut will continually check in on your child&rsquo;s learning to assure they are getting the most&nbsp;of&nbsp;their&nbsp;classes.&nbsp; OTHER OFFERINGS&nbsp; We can also help your child prepare for: the French subject tests for SAT, AP &amp; CLEP, the European DELF/DALF, the Canadian TEF and other standardized testing, college entry exams, studying or traveling abroad,&nbsp;cultural changes when moving abroad,&nbsp;and much more!&nbsp; &nbsp;