This book belongs in a bigger kid’s camp pack, along with a flashlight for top-bunk freak-out sessions. Throw in a dictionary so he gets the full gothic horror of Gaiman’s rhyming couplets, which outline the nightmarish trip of two kids and a Disney-esque gazelle through a torture-chamber sewer. Grimly’s drawings are obsessively macabre worlds unto themselves and full of surprises. The final puzzle: What does “Z†stand for?
The Dangerous Alphabet
Neil Gaiman, Gris Grimley
HarperCollins
$17.99