Nightmare Hunter

Gr 3-6–Every day is a nightmare for Maxwell Dark, who has the paranormal ability to visit and defeat people’s nightmare monsters. As an expert-level nightmare hunter with 73 successful cases, he is confident that he has seen it all and can certainly send middle schooler Sid’s bedtime tormentors packing. Sid is wary of mysterious stranger Maxwell’s offers to help and refuses his assistance until her nightmares become too intense to endure. Max and Sid team up to take on the worst creatures her mind can conjure in order to locate the source of her terror, but when Max realizes his past and Sid’s nightmares are connected, his easy case turns into a much bigger and scarier challenge than he could have ever imagined. For readers eager to level up from the tamer scares of the “Desmond Cole” and “Goosebumps,” this graphic novel builds its scare-factor slowly, but the visuals may be too intense for some readers by the end. Smith’s aesthetic and characterization has a 1990s cartoon feel, and his full-page renderings of nightmare monsters are delightfully detailed. Readers will root for Maxwell and Sid as they team up to defeat the ultimate ghoul—blood-chilling Splithead—and escape the confines of her mind in one piece.