The Dreamkeeper [Hardcover]

Robert Ingpen (Author, Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 4 and up | Grade Level: P and up

Have you ever wondered what happens to dream creatures who escape your dreams? What happens to all those goblins and fairies, all those witches and dragons? Award-winning author-illustrator Robert Ingpen introduces us to the Dreamkeeper, a man who roams the dream world, capturing the wild spirits and returning them to the Dreamtree where they can live in peace and safety. Full of details showing all the whistles, lures, and baskets the Dreamkeeper uses to track down and catch the dream creatures, this is a delightful fantasy tale, full of imagination. Written in the form of a letter to his granddaughter and illustrated with a surreal clarity,Mr. Ingpen’s guide to the dream world is both witty and heartfelt.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Gr. 2-4. Using spells and magic, the Dreamkeeper^B catches bad dreams as they escape to become real and carries cages and baskets to trap nightmare monsters and transform them. Ingpen, recipient of the 1986 Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Illustration,^B melds a wild, chatty, sometimes deliciously scary narrative created for his granddaughter. Beautiful, meticulously detailed pictures show where magic happens, including sepia-toned double-page spreads crowded with storybook people, dragons, knights, animals, and partially clothed characters--all acting out their destinies. There's contemporary magic as well as the old-fashioned sort: the Dreamkeeper's tiny, bearded assistant has a powerful weapon, a special remote control that allows him to "expose the presence of any tricky goblin or hairy troll." Kids will be drawn to the pictures of fantastic creatures that are part of the "scary shadows you see on the wall or ceiling at night." Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Publisher

Robert Ingpen is the WINNER of the Hans Christian Andersen Award. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 4 and up
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Minedition (March 16, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0698400364
• ISBN-13: 978-0698400368
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 9.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,087,762 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Dreamkeeper by Robert Ingpen, March 12, 2003

By 

Stephanie Smith (Sumter, SC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dreamkeeper: A Letter From Robert Ingpen To His Granddaughter, Alice Elizabeth (Hardcover)

This book was given to my eldest daughter from her grandmother. All of my children instantly fell in love with the story and the pictures. Over the years I have had to read that story to all three of my children's kindergartden, first, and second grade classes. It is a favorite with every student that I read it to and I get a great many calls from parents to get the title and where they can get a copy. It has become a tradition in our family that this book is read on St. Patricks day every year. My eldest daughter is now 13 and she still loves to hear and even to read the story. I now have to buy a new copu because the old one is falling apart from so many readings. This is a great story for anyone that believes in the creatures of fey, young or old and it even helped my youngest daughter with her night terrors. As long as she believed that the Dreamkeeper was on the job, she slept peacefully and still does. She even sometimes leaves him a snack just as she would for Santa and the Easter Bunny. After all don't we all need something to believe in with everything that goes bump in the night? I highly recomend this book to everyone, not just children. I find myself believing in the Dreamkeeper as much as my children.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ingpen dreams up another classic, April 10, 2006

By 

Nugget (Melbourne) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dreamkeeper (Hardcover)

Robert Ingpen is a venerable Australian author/ illustrator of over 100 books, the majority children's or picture books. He has a phalanx of awards; the pointy end being the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Illustration. Robert is the only Aussie to have won this distinction.

Penguin's MinEdition (their caps, not mine) imprint has re-released Ingpen's The Dreamkeeper for a new generation of children, ten years after the first edition.

The book takes the form of a letter from Ingpen to his granddaughter, Alice. It is a soliloquy free from dialogue, and quite unlike the wham-bam-hook-`em-on-the-first-page-or-else helterskelter of other picture books. Ingpen builds a gentle rhythm that parents may appreciate. After all, isn't the job of night-time stories to make children sleepy?

The Dreamkeeper, very much a blend of holy men from many cultures, is charged with capturing the goblins and imps that cause nightmares and threaten the dreams of children. He does so with the assistance of his sister, her magic licorice and his faithful goblin helper, Tally. But the story is just an adjunct to the stunning pencil and watercolour illustrations, which should delight most children and reward hours of careful study. The amazing detail puts many other picture books to shame.

Younger readers will need help, and older readers who enjoy a robust story may grow bored with the pace. But there is a large audience of children, freshly Ringed into believing `in a world just around a corner of your mind', who will love this. And for children suffering from night terrors, fewer books come more highly recommended.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some of them want to use you. Some of them want to be used by you., March 27, 2006

By 

E. R. Bird "Ramseelbird" (Manhattan, NY) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dreamkeeper: A Letter From Robert Ingpen To His Granddaughter, Alice Elizabeth (Hardcover)

This book is a bit of a puzzle to me. Back in 1998 a publisher called "Star Bright Books" (still in operation) published Robert Ingpen's stunning dreamscape of a picture book, "The Dreamkeeper". Usually a book only gets one life in this world. "The Dreamkeeper" seems to have two. I received a review copy of the book from Minedition, a colorful division of the Penguin Young Readers Group. It appears that "The Dreamkeeper" was to be republished by the eclectic publisher in March of 2006. I say this with some confusion, though, since nowhere on the minedition website is "The Dreamkeeper" even mentioned. Robert Ingpen is brought up more than once, but that shouldn't be surprising. He's an amazing fella. So with much scratching of the head, I turn to this book to review it. And if explaining to you whether or not this puppy will ever get published is hard, imagine how much harder it might be to describe a book that reads more like the flitting shadows of the subconscious rather than a straightforward picture book. I greatly enjoyed Ingpen's ode to our nocturnal meanderings. Just don't ask me how I'd classify it in my library.

The book acts as a letter between author Robert Ingpen and his granddaughter Alice Elisabeth. In it, he begins by explaining that there is a man who "collects dreams and keep them safe. He is called The Dreamkeeper". With a collection of charms and lures all sewn to his jacket and variety of baskets and cages hanging from his person, The Dreamkeeper is always ready to catch the bad dreams "when they try to escape to become real". Explanations are made as to how one goes about getting a dragon and the best way to trick a witch. The Dreamkeeper lives in a pigeonhouse with his sister and a goblin named Tally. Tally has a remote control that allows him to defend himself (and brother, trust me when I say that you've never seen a remote control like this one). Then we get to see the all-powerful Dreamtree and Ingpen lets loose with a stunning array of mythological, nightmarish, fabulous, and fantastical creatures and characters. Look fast and you might see Pinocchio running beside a wolf who paces in front of the White Rabbit from "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland". Turn another page and scholarly monkeys write in books, trolls strangle snakes, Long John Silver's on the loose, fairies dance just out of reach, and so many images hit your eye at once that you don't know where to look for a long long time. By the end, The Dreamkeeper walks by himself. "Safe traveling, good dreaming, and God bless, -Grandpa".

Perhaps the fact that there are so many scenes and characters in the Dreamtree from Lewis Carroll's books can be traced in part to the fact that this book has been written for a girl named Alice. Part of what I liked about this story was that in some ways, Ingpen IS the Dreamkeeper himself. You never see his character's face, which allows him to be anybody. And Ingpen certainly does capture the bad dreams, keep the good, and display both for his grandchildren in the form of his beautifully illustrated pages. Parents will love explaining to their kids who some of the characters are that run past the reader as they move from scene to scene. Those dreamy kids that love fairies or even books like Dr. Ernest Drake's, "Dragonology" will appreciate the almost scientific explainations of the uses of different cages and traps for bad dreams. And of course the illustrations cannot be beat. Stunning doesn't quite explain it. Awesome comes close. Jaw-droppingly mesmerizing to the point that one forgets to eat or bathe while reading... that's just about right.

Of course, there is one thing this book reminded me of right off the bat: "Sandman". How could it not? Basically, the Dreamkeeper is not too distantly removed from that graphic novel classic character The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman. In both cases there's a fellow who manages the dreamscape, has a house of his own somewhere, someone to tend his library, and various assistants. The similarities are rather striking. I'm not suggesting that Ingpen knew he was making a kid-friendly version of Gaiman's books, but had he included any references to "A Mid-Summer Night's Dream" I would be less forgiving. As it stands, this works as a good kid intro to the world of dreaming. Then, when they're teenagers, you can get them a copy of "Preludes and Nocturnes".

All in all, you won't find anything like "The Dreamkeeper" out there today. This is one of those rare little books that come across as particularly enjoyable to read. One can only hope that it will indeed be published again so that new hoards of children might look at its pages and find new dreams to add to their own. In a word, beautiful.