THE BOOK OF THE SANDMAN and THE ALPHABET OF SLEEP

I discovered this vintage book and I'm gob-smacked with joy over it.

Mar 09, 2024

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I stumbled upon this book at my favorite second-hand shop in Vancouver, The Paper Hound, and it haunted me until I realized I needed it for my collection. Originally published in the Netherlands in 1988, it’s one of many collaborations between Dutch writer-illustrator team Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet, most well-known for their series of GNOMES books from 1979 on through the ‘80s. I’m already familiar with the first Gnomes book and own a copy, but The Book of the Sandman (and The Alphabet of Sleep) was hitherto unknown to me. I fell in love with the illustrations, some of which I find provide useful reference for some book projects I’m working on myself. Upon reading through the whole volume, I’m so excited about it I need to share it with you.

The premise of the book is about two naturalist travelers who discover a secret book in a remote log cabin called The Alphabet of Sleep (or Das Ulphabet vom Shlaf, which is more fun to say) by Johann Poberschnigg (also fun to say). A re-creation of this book is printed and included within the volume itself: an alphabetical poetic treatise on various facts about sleeping, accompanied by hilarious anthropomorphic animal paintings.

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The uncovering of this book leads them on a journey to meet the mysterious Madam Holle, an eccentric old woman who guards and watches over the Sandman, a little 6-inch-tall man who lives in a castle atop a mountain.

The Sandman travels the world each night on his immortal donkey Suzanne to put all living things to sleep by flicking sleep sand into their eyes. He also lives with a fairy housekeeper named Roberta and an owl named Petronius.

I love this little detail about Roberta. The line about pancakes cracks me up.

I also love this paragraph about Petronius the owl, which sets the tone for the brilliant absurdist tone of the whole book.

The book goes on to explain the science and stories behind how the Sandman works: he makes his sleeping sand from an underground river, where the sand is collected by aardvarks, sieved carefully, shoveled into sacks, and given a sleeping spell by small choirs of pixie families who sing songs through a stretched-out spider web.

Here we see the Sandman shoveling sand into a sack which is supposed to be held open by Suzanne the donkey, but she doesn’t always remember so Petronius does it instead.

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The book explains the Sandman’s techniques for flicking sand with precise aim, which he practices daily by flicking into jars, glasses and bottles. It also explains how he balances the sand doses to have either immediate or delayed effects, and the importance of his precision for the whole ordeal. This little bit about the cart horse had me laughing out loud.

Further explanations are given about how the Sandman covers the entire world in one night (by traveling at the speed of thought) and how he gets around problems like aiming for the eyes of chameleons, animals in motion, sailors on ships, and people with glasses (this done by throwing the sand at an angle from behind so it ricochets off the glass and into the eye).

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The villains of the Sandman are The Keep-Awakes, monsters and demons who threaten to keep people awake with bad dreams, worries and fears.

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Isn’t this glorious? The whole book is a hilarious, profound, and wondrous delight. If you can hunt down a copy, I highly recommend it.

For more images from this book and the afore-mentioned GNOMES, I’ve added a collection to my Where the Wild Things Art Facebook page here: Rien Poortvliet

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