The Sandman: Dream Hunters - Softcover

Neil Gaiman is the most critically acclaimed comics writer of the 1990s and is the author of numerous books and graphic novels. He is the New York Times No. 1 best-selling author of American Gods and Anansi Boys. P. Craig Russell is an acclaimed artist who has worked on Sandman and Murder Mysteries, as well as adapting Wagner's Ring cycle to comics.

Grade 9 Up—A fox and a badger wager to see who can drive a monk from his temple. After they both try and fail, the badger departs in disgrace and the fox falls in love with the monk. When she learns that his life is in danger, she calls upon the King of All Night's Dreaming to help her save his life. If the story sounds familiar, that's because this book retells Gaiman's 1999 award-winning novella as a graphic novel. While the original story was illustrated with breathtaking watercolors by Yoshitaka Amano, this new adaptation looks more like the rest of the original "Sandman" series. It is divided into panels, characters speak in word balloons, and the artwork (especially that of the fox) is more cartoonlike. There are several advantages to this new approach—readers can see the characters and the action in better detail, the graphic-novel format may attract reluctant readers, and readers get to see Dream speak in his white-on-black word balloons again. But the disadvantage of this version is that its presence eclipses the awe-inspiring beauty of Amano's work. The Dream Hunters is equally powerful as straight text or broken up into panels, but hopefully readers will be inspired by this book to seek out the earlier version (which thankfully is still in print) and enjoy another interpretation of the artwork for this story.—Andrea Lipinski, New York Public Library
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