The Queen kisses the Princess to wake her up, and that’s nothing compared to the real twist that follows. And their quest is not quite what it seems. It is sometimes frightening: cobwebby sleepwalkers move through a town like zombies. The way is sometimes dark: they travel underground. They come back with terrifying news: a sleeping sickness is taking over the land and is moving ever-closer to their own realm! The Queen (who once slept a year under these particular dwarfs’ care and came out of it just fine) postpones her wedding, dons a mail shirt, grabs her sword, and leads the dwarfs on a quest to wake the sleeping princess, up in her tower guarded by thorns. It would be the end of her life, she decided, if life was a time of choices.īut the dwarfs don’t come back to Kanselaire with gifts of silk. She wondered how she would feel to be a married woman. It seemed both unlikely and extremely final. Three dwarfs burrow underneath, though, in order to get their Queen the finest silks in Dorimar. They share a border but nobody can get across to visit. Two kingdoms lie on either sides of an impassable mountain. Names are in sort supply in this telling. The queen had a name, but nowadays people only ever called her Your Majesty. Though the story is simply told, much like Gaiman’s earlier fairy-tale novel Stardust, the traditional style highlights the plot’s unique surprises and occasional shining side-remarks. I was thoroughly entranced for the twenty minutes it took me to read Gaiman’s words and examine all the neat little details in Chris Riddell’s pen drawings. The tale is dark and the pictures more so.

Or, rather than a picture book, perhaps I’ll call it an illuminated story. The Sleeper and The Spindle, written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Chris Riddell, is a stunning new fairy-tale picture book for Young Adults. Previous knowledge of the original Sleeping Beauty/Snow White stories will help.)

Age range recommendation: 10 and up (So long as readers are familiar with the likes of Grimm’s fairy tales and know that things can get ugly.

Ugly by donna jo napoli