The Dangerous Alphabet is a new ABC book by Neil Gaiman, who according to the dust jacket, "hopes he got all the bugs out of the alphabet." Unfortunately, I don't think he has managed to debug this alphabet yet.
I love alphabet books. My son struggled to learn his alphabet because of a learning disability, and we read hundreds of alphabet books. Being an illustrator myself, I delight in finding well written, well illustrated children's books with new slants.
When I received this book, I was delighted by the Gorey-like illustrations. Odd, slightly creepy, marvelous pen and ink illustrations weave throughout the pages of the alphabet. Gris Grimly has a wonderful hand and slightly skewed sense of humor that makes for a masterful illustrator.
The writing by Neil Gaiman started off with promise. The rhyming structure was sound and the concept held promise. However, the words used are way above the reading level of a beginning reader, which in itself might not completely damage my opinion of the book. I think that kids develop great vocabularies when they are exposed to advanced word lists as a matter of course.
The Dangerous Alphabet also breaks from the "A is for" structure on a number of pages. In some cases the letters substitute in for "names" of characters. In other cases he uses the letter as its homonym word, such as Y for Why. This makes the book extremely difficult for kids to understand and undermines the value of the book as any sort of useful ABC book.
On the page for "L" it says that "L is like 'eaven, their last destination." Perhaps my kids, my staff, and I are all a little slow, but we can't figure this one out. Assuming that 'eaven is heaven, we are not really sure how it is like "L." All we could come up with was that the line was supposed to be equivalent to "Hell is like heaven, their last destination." This still doesn't make much sense, but I think it's what the author intended.
At the beginning of The Dangerous Alphabet, the author notes, "The alphabet, as given in this publication, is not to be relied upon and has a dangerous flaw that an eagle-eyed reader may be able to discern." Unfortunately, this author's ABC book has more than one flaw. Although I don't ascribe to the idea that children should be shielded from scary things, in the "Disney" mentality, this book strays too far afield to deliver on its promise of a unique and interesting ABC book that would interest children and entice adults. Fun to a point as an oddity for adult readers, this book is useless as an ABC book for kids.
Warning - Although I normally love author and illustrator sites and think they make a wonderful resource when teaching or enjoying an author's work, please do NOT let your kids go to this author's website. Apparently Neil Gaiman has done an independent film about cannibalism, which has previews on this website, and the illustrations by Gris Grimly which are showcased on the site are largely for a mature audience - definitely NOT FOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN. Gris Grimly has done some other books for children, however, I would check them for age appropriateness before sending them to anyone you know.
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