Customer Reviews

The Dangerous Alphabet

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a great book for a first year who needs to know the letters of the alphabet, but doesnt want anything boring or sickly sweet. Neil Gaiman fans wont be disappointed, nor their children or otherr small recipients. There is a slight switch in a couple of letters to make the poem work. Dont get this if all you want is for your child to read sanitised Disney, where even normal life is a bit too scary for diddums...

If you like Neil Gaiman and the Alphabet then you will love this ;-)
I would like a board book version for my son but the paper version is good enough for now.

What a lovely little book! I'm 22 years old and I read it for the first time the other day - I wish I'd known about it as a child!

This is a strange book if only because I'm not sure who the target audience is - kids or adults? On appearance it seems like a kids' book - it's rhyming couplets featuring a letter of the alphabet per line is too short and simplistic for an adult so it must be for kids. But when you see the pictures in the book you probably wouldn't give your child this book. Even though I thought the artwork was cool, there are pictures of kids being abducted, chained up, and cooked into pies! The "story" has two kids and their pet "gazelle" (Gaiman trying a bit hard to be quirky) venture into the sewers where a number of shady characters try to catch them but they escape. In the end I think parents wouldn't think the book suitable for kids and adults would see it as too short to be worth spending money on. It's probably for Gaiman's fanbase who'll buy anything this man puts out, but for the more casual reader looking for something? Try elsewhere, this book isn't anything.

A very unusual and sinister alphabet but a fresh approach to illustrating letters for meaning. All the more unusual because of its compact size.

It's a book of gorgeous art, however it's also very insubstantial. I'm not quite sure who I'd recommend this to - I normally associate Gaiman's stuff with something to get my teeth into, as it were, but this is basically just 50 lines or so of charming doggerel verse, with some cute pictures. It has made a nice talking point for house visitors, though, some of whom have never read any Gaiman, so it does have its uses!

Neil Gaiman is normally outstanding but this book disappointed on many levels. The images are superb, of course, but terrifying. The story, on the other hand, is either banal or so obscure as to be incomprehensible. I'm not sure who the intended audience is. Children of an age to be interested in 'traditional' alphabet books would be traumatised by the story (such as it is) and the images. If it is intended as a story-book, why confuse it by introducing the alphabet concept? Sorry, this one just didn't work for me at all. Try 'Blueberry Girl' instead - that one's pure gold.

so much fun. great pictures and as usual with Gaiman's work, great for adults too