A random little boy awakens in The Facility, an institution located underground in which children from all over the world are implanted with assorted fears through simulated nightmare scenarios. This particular random boy-identified as a Problem Subject who has the ability to escape implantation-breaks free from his treatment and battles through chamber after gruesome chamber to learn the secret of the nightmare facility.Complemented by illustrations of cartoonish viscerality (no more graphic than the Grimms' story "How Some Children Played at Slaughtering"), The Big Book of Nightmares and Childhood Fears is a children's novel that pays homage to the fairy tale in all its ghastly and unabashed origins.