The Sandman Cometh

For years, parents already at a loss for the second verse of “Humpty Dumpty” and completely at sea about whether Peter Rabbit and Peter Cottontail were one and the same couldn’t answer the questions children asked about the Sandman. Was this fellow supposed to be frightening? Reassuring? A pragmatist? As the night approaches when many children want to stay awake to see Santa, is it fair to talk about the Sandman, whose one visible aim in life is to put them to sleep?

Two artists, in different parts of the world, have put on paper the man they envision filling his pockets with sand each night and flinging it into the eyes of unsuspecting children. It could be, since bedtime stories are the bedrock of children’s books, that these two have unearthed the ultimate lullaby. Rob Shepperson, author of THE SANDMAN (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: $12.95), had a sleepless childhood, if you take his comments seriously: “The Sandman never got into my room when I was a kid. I kept my eyes wide open.” He recalls that counting sheep never served him well, and as for the Sandman story, “It woke me up.” Since he considered the guy a “scary character,” he turned around and created a “goofy guy,” contradicting Sandman mythology.

In his story, a boy frolics with the Sandman, and in that animated bedroom (“Everything is alive for children”) all toys and books join the romp. To keep himself “entertained,” Shepperson says, he crammed details into each frame. Small beings peer around corners, climb every possible surface, invade each inch of white space on the page.

Sounds like a lot of hooey? Well, it’s not easy to put one over on any kid today; this is the information generation we’re talking about. Rien Poortvliet and his collaborator Wil Huygen in Holland have come up with a rival for their popular “Gnomes.” This one, THE BOOK OF THE SANDMAN AND THE ALPHABET OF SLEEP (Harry N. Abrams: $17.95 through Dec. 31 when the price goes up; 122 pp.) contains footnotes that sound like logical explanations. Using equations that invoke terms like “speed of thought” the book may convince readers that its subject really can travel into every single home each night, in 12 short hours.

Before he entered the world of children’s book illustration, Poortvliet worked in advertising. “I drew happy families eating their soup and washing their hands with Lux and cleaning their feet. When I began to do books, there was joy in drawing faces of real mothers, no Coca-Cola calendar mothers.”

Whether advertising or children’s books contain the mythology of our times, Poortvliet has worked in both. But lingering over a children’s book, seems to suit him, especially in a fast-paced, fact-based world. “There are so many miracles in life, and it’s worth thinking them over,” he says. “I have time to think about them--most thinking I do at night. I’m not able to stay asleep.”

Poortvliet, who says Huygen has “what the English call humor with the tongue in the cheek” describes what sounds like all-night, onerous working sessions: “We sit in the studio, and we are both smoking a pipe, sitting on chairs and leaning back with our feet on the table. We have an unbelievable amount of fun and joy.”

Thanks to all the high jinks and a good deal of craft, parents can consult this season’s two books on the Sandman and decide what their children need--a playfully scientific catalogue including a snug discussion of how sand makes one sleepy, or, as in Shepperson’s work, why staying up all night is a child’s idea of the ultimate in fun. And doesn’t it sound as if the Sandman is another conspiracy by adults to get kids to go to sleep?

Next, a pop quiz. How does Jack Frost make those pretty patterns on the glass? And does the Sandman himself sleep?