Sign of the Sandman

Gr 4–6—Ten-year-old Charlie Galen and his best friend, Plug, are plunged into the Dreamscape, the world where human dreams begin. Charlie is astonished to discover he is the son of the Sandman, "a child born of sand and man, endowed with the power to banish evil from dreams." The Guardians of the Dreamscape have been protecting Charlie, the Heir, from the denizens of nightmares and their ruler, Moloch. Charlie and Plug travel in and out of the Dreamscape, from reality to dreams to nightmares, first escaping, then fighting and destroying Moloch. This is lightweight chase-and-escape fantasy, with little substantive world-building. The plot borrows from world mythology but is not rooted in it. The characters skate nimbly on a surface of shallow action. The 10-year-old main characters have teenage sensibilities—while their dialogue has humor, their worldview can sometimes ring false. Likable sidekick Plug has all the best lines. Underdeveloped female players suffer from stock characterizations, and poetically evocative descriptions of the Dreamscape are not enough to energize the clichéd situations. The "chosen child" hero is a well-worn trope that needs radically original treatment to make it shiny and new; the outcome here provides satisfying, if predictable, closure.—Janice M. Del Negro, GSLIS Dominican University, River Forest, IL