Book Review - Guillermo del Toro's Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark by Guillermo del Toro, Christopher Golden, and Troy Nixey
Published by: Hyperion Books for Children
Publication Date: July 19th, 2011
Format: Hardcover, 272 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy
Blackwood Manor has a dark past. Something happened to Emerson Blackwood one night in the basement. Someone died at the hands of Emerson Blackwood that night when he snapped. But that isn't where this story starts, that is where this story ends. It starts with an eager young Emerson Blackwood and a colleague showing him an unusual skeleton. Emerson is a young naturalist and what he sees upends his knowledge of what he knows about the natural world. Because he was shown the skeletal remains of a Tooth Fairy. He buys the remains and goes public with the discovery, only to be laughed at and then shunned. His colleagues think he has gone insane. But he hasn't. At least not yet. Emerson is undeterred by the disapprobrium as he writes of his continuing discoveries in his journal. He takes it upon himself not just to travel the world looking for a deeper understanding of Tooth Fairies, but also to create a guide to all dangerous fairies that the unsuspecting populace doesn't know about. He takes to travelling with an old man and his daughter who have also spent years researching the unseelie world. Though Emerson's tunnel vision for Tooth Fairies puts all their lives at risk. He has come to unearth evidence that they are prolific across the entire world. Fairy tales often vary from region to region, but not the stories of the Tooth Fairies, otherwise known as Bloody Gums, Gnaw Bones, and Bone Crunchers. They are unique. They are organized. And they are dangerous. Soon the old man dies and Emerson marries his daughter and they have a child. Tooth Fairies love nothing more than the teeth of children. And Emerson made a miscalculation in Italy. They are on to him. He flees to America and holes up in his house. But they are coming and they want revenge.
This is an odd little volume. It's half narrative and half field guide and in my mind only one of those works. Hint, it's not the guide. I've read enough guides in my time to know a good one, and there needs to be more depth, more worldbuilding, more thought for it to work. I should probably have prefaced that with, and I haven't actually watched the movie this is a tie-in for so maybe there is more worldbuilding there, but I really couldn't be bothered after reading the book and the book should be able to stand on it's own. I love Christopher Golden and it is patently clear that he wrote the part of the book I love, Emerson Blackwood's journey of discovery. Emerson is an interesting character in that he seems perfectly normal and reasonable at the beginning, but one taste of the supernatural and he starts a descent into obsession and madness. That madness deals with Tooth Fairies. It is a truth universally acknowledged that we humans are prone to nightmares about our teeth. I don't know why it is, but I've always had them. I can even remember having them way back in kindergarten. Usually they crumble and then choke me and I'm spitting them out. It's horrible. For years and years I thought I was alone, but then one day I was talking to my friend Grant and he was doing a piece about teeth and I commented on it by telling him about my teeth nightmares, his were almost exactly the same. So I started asking more and more people. I don't know what percentage of the population has these dreams, because another friend who was in on this conversation was like, I've never had that dream, but when you google it it says it's "a very common dream." Though some of the analysis online is absurd. No, I don't have a fear of public speaking, I have a fear of my freakin' teeth falling out! This book taps into that fear. I don't know why I never had a fear of the Tooth Fairy even though I had a fear of my teeth falling out. Probably because no one was referring to them as Bloody Gums, Gnaw Bones, or Bone Crunchers. So, yeah, my teeth nightmares have been expanded exponentially.
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