Review: A Tale of Sand by Ramon Perez (and Jim Henson)

I think more screenplays should be adapted into graphic novels. The formats work very well together, and are interchangeable in many instances. It worked very well, for example, with this story.

If you are not good at just "going with the flow" when you read, this is not a good selection for you. I enjoy letting the story decide when I'm ready to know a certain detail (if ever) so I like books like this. There is a lot of "you'll find out later; just keep reading" and some "you never get to know because you don't need to know." But the payoff at the end is great.

If you are not a fan of wordless graphic novels, this book might bother you. There are several pages that have no dialogue, and a lot of image to take in. There is still dialogue in a lot of places, but there is no dialogue for the sake of dialogue (which I see a lot when protagonists find themselves alone and feel the need to talk to themselves about things that don't help set the tone, advance the plot, or explain the setting).

If you don't like weirdness, you will definitely not like this book. There is an abundance of weirdness.

This should suffice to explain what I mean by "weirdness."

Lucky for me, I love when books keep things a mystery from me, I can handle a lack of word bubbles, and weird should really be my middle name (though Lynne gets me less confused looks at the DMV). So I loved this book. It's a shame this has never been translated to the big screen, but maybe if the book does well, we could see this as a movie someday in the future.



This book was VERY heavy on the illustrations which, if you're not used to that, can be hard to deal with.  Alex chose the book this week and she's really gung-ho about graphic novels. I could really take them or leave them and I felt that way with Tale of Sand.

The book was definitely readable.  I was never at any point confused about what was going on and it did have a really cool ending (which I will let you figure out for yourself.)  But if you're not used to graphic novels or they're not your particular cup of tea, they this really isn't the book for you and I think that's why I didn't really enjoy it that much.

There were parts that I loved.  The illustrations were absolutely stunning.  I mean, the colors and the movement and how things were drawn, it was just gorgeous and if for no other reason than that, go out and read this book.

This was probably one of my favorites.

Also, it is a fun little tale because it's Jim Henson and, as Alex has told us so wonderfully in the beginning of the week, he's just freakin' awesome.  But it didn't really hit me.  I probably won't ever read it again and in terms of my favorite graphic novels, it definitely doesn't rank.

My bottom line 2 1/2 out of five.