100 Books in 2012:
Tale of Sand, screenplay written by Jim Henson and Jerry Juhl, as realized (in graphic novel form) by Ramon K. Perez.
In the late 1960s Jim Henson and Jerry Juhl wrote a full-length screenplay for a movie they called Tale of Sand, a project playing off of Henson’s noted short Timepiece. They were never able to get the movie off the ground, however, and the screenplay sat in the Henson archives until Ramon Perez was hired to adapt the screenplay into a graphic novel.
Perez’s art is beautiful, and brings to life a story that is representative of Henson’s adult work - heavily metaphorical and plagued with questions of identity, how one deals with the pressures of time and society, and how one makes meaning out of daily life. Reading this book felt a little like looking at modern art to me - you have to work to pull together a theory of what it means and represents. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s just a lovely art piece of a book.
