Stroke of Genius?

Image credit: Clive Barker Photograph by Zach Gold

BRUSH WITH FAME Painter Barker turns to a new canvas -- children's lit

It began with a painting -- a portrait of a cranky old man in a canary suit, six squished hats stacked atop his head. Staring into the crusty canvas he had just finished, Clive Barker came face-to-face for the first time with a place he would eventually call Abarat. The man is an evil mage, the painting told him. His power is in his hats, and his name is Kaspar Wolfswinkel. Quickly, he continued the encounter with another painting. And another. And another...

Seven years later, Barker sits in the sunlit study of his Spanish-style home in Beverly Hills, surrounded by the dozens of vibrant, expressive paintings that spilled out of him after he first created Kaspar. They are whimsical and weird, Cirque du Soleil meets circus freak show: a church with a dragon's skull for a steeple. A fiend whose nightmares swim within a high glass collar filled with fluid. A monster stitched together from skin and leather. ''This had never happened to me before,'' recalls the 49-year-old Englishman, his voice smoky-sweet. ''I just put up the canvas and made some marks, and I realized -- there's a world here.''

Of course, freaky, fantastic images aren't unexpected from Clive Barker. For the past 18 years, the author (most recently, of 2001's filthy-wicked Hollywood satire ''Coldheart Canyon'') and filmmaker (among others, he exec-produced 1998's acclaimed ''Gods and Monsters'') has specialized in conjuring up the sick stuff of nightmares -- most notably, the sadistic and all too aptly named demon Pinhead from his 1987 horror flick, ''Hellraiser.''

What is unusual is that ''Abarat'' -- the first in a planned four-part series -- ain't for the Goths and geeks; it's for kids. Which, yes, does make Clive Barker look like just one more Big Name (along with Michael Chabon, Isabel Allende, and Carl Hiaasen) barging his way into the children's market, trying to be the next J.K. Rowling. Yet ''Abarat'' distinguishes itself in several ways. For one, the book itself, now hitting stores, is a veritable illuminated manuscript, a thick-papered tome containing glossy reproductions of more than 100 of the author's paintings. ''Abarat'' also boasts Hollywood hype: Two years ago, before Barker had even written a word of it, the Walt Disney Studio bought the rights for $8 million. The studio will determine its exact plans after the second novel, as the first is all setup and cliff-hangers. ''I'm crazy for the possibilities,'' says Thomas Schumacher, president of Disney's animation division. ''Did you see the guy whose seven brothers live on the antlers on his head? This thing's ripe.''

A blend of ''Alice in Wonderland'' and ''The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,'' ''Abarat'' is the story of Candy Quackenbush, a plucky young girl yearning to escape the boring burg of Chickentown. Assigned by a teacher to do a report on her dulls-ville hamlet, Candy begins unearthing mysterious secret after mysterious secret -- like how Chickentown once bordered a magical sea. On the other side: Abarat, an archipelago of 25 enchanted islands -- one for each hour of the day, plus one that exists outside of time.

Of course, it doesn't take long for Candy to find her way to this crazy Caribbean and make some friends (like the thief John Mischief, the aforementioned antlered fellow), as well as some enemies (like Christopher Carrion, the wizard ruler of the island of midnight, and Rojo Pixler, the greedy overlord of 3 a.m.). The former is plotting to blot out all the lights in the sky; the latter is scheming to eradicate magic from the isles. Perhaps Candy will be able to stop them -- if she can untangle the mystery of her past.