The Dangerous Alphabet

A is for Always, that's where we embark . . .

Two children, treasure map in hand, and their pet gazelle sneak past their father, out of their house, and into a world beneath the city, where monsters and pirates roam.

Will they find the treasure? Will they make it out alive?

The Dangerous Alphabet is a tale of adventure, piracy, danger, and heroism told in twenty-six alphabetical lines—although even the alphabet is not to be relied upon here. A delightfully dangerous journey from national bestselling author Neil Gaiman and the monstrously talented Gris Grimly, The Dangerous Alphabet is sure to captivate and chillyoung readers.

A is for Always, that's where we embark . . .

Two children, treasure map in hand, and their pet gazelle sneak past their father, out of their house, and into a world beneath the city, where monsters and pirates roam.

Will they find the treasure? Will they make it out alive?

The Dangerous Alphabet is a tale of adventure, piracy, danger, and heroism told in twenty-six alphabetical lines—although even the alphabet is not to be relied upon here. A delightfully dangerous journey from national bestselling author Neil Gaiman and the monstrously talented Gris Grimly, The Dangerous Alphabet is sure to captivate and chill young readers.

Children's Literature

AGERANGE: Ages 5 up.

Neil Gaiman's idiosyncratic science fiction world is not to everyone's taste, but those to whom it appeals will love this alphabet book. They will find Crimly's sepia- toned drawings somewhat reminiscent of Edmund Gorey, a perfect fit with the sparse text. Two children with a treasure map progress through the alphabet and a sewer system filled with monsters and pirates to emerge safely at Z. This is a tale for the reader to construct, one that refuses to be reduced to a simple story line. Each reading is likely to suggest a new interpretation. We are warned from the start that even the story's alphabet is not to be trusted. "C" for example is said to be "the way that we find and we look," but the illustrations show that the letter is both a pun for "see." At the same time the page is filled with clocks. In any case, this is clearly not a book to hand a young child to develop alphabetic awareness. It is meant for children and adults who have a slightly ghoulish sense of humor. Reviewer: Mary Hynes-Berry

Novelist Neil Gaiman has sent a British businessman tumbling into a fantastic underworld and had a devil and angel comically conspiring to thwart the Apocalypse. He found his biggest success, though, in Death, Dreams and Destruction -- and the four other similarly named siblings who controlled the reins of the human race's emotional impulses in his graphic-novel series The Sandman, a wholesale rejuvenation of graphic fiction that had everyone from Tori Amos to Norman Mailer spinning with, yes, Delirium.