It Takes a Graveyard: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Ever since the child had learned to walk, he had been his mother's and father's despair and delight, for there never was such a boy for wandering, for climbing up things, for getting into and out of things. That night he had been woken by the sound of something on the floor beneath him falling with a crash. Awake, he soon became bored, and had begun looking for a way out of his crib....

He landed with a muffled thump on a small mound of furry, fuzzy toys. He was surprised when he hit the floor, but he did not cry out; if you cried out, they came and put you back in your crib.

He crawled out of the room. Stairs that went down, he had discovered, were fairly simple. He did them sitting down, bumping from step to step on his well-padded bottom.... When he reached the last step, when he reached the little hall and stood up, the diaper fell off. He stepped out of it. He was only wearing a child's nightshirt. The stairs that led back up to his room and his family were steep, but the door to the street was open and inviting....

The child stepped out of the house a little hesitantly. The fog wreathed around him like a long-lost friend. And then, uncertainly at first, then with increasing speed and confidence, the boy tottered up the hill.

By now most people interested in the 2009 Newbery Award book, The Graveyard Book, have heard Neil Gaiman's explanation of how, with Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book on his mind, he took his two-year-old son to a nearby cemetery to let him ride his tricycle away from any danger of traffic, and in one of those creative connections which writers make, began to imagine a parallel story about a toddler whose family is killed by a midnight murderer and who unknowingly wanders away and into the kindly care of the ghosts within a neighboring graveyard.

There's no bouncy Disney soundtrack to this parallel, no singing and dancing phantasms, but the kindly Owens take the two-year-old into their mausoleum and make sure that he has a name (Nobody Owens) and everything he needs to grow up as a live boy in a community of benevolent ghosts. There is a mysterious Celtic tomb guarded mindlessly by the slithery Sleer, a Roman soldier who is the oldest human ghost residing there, ghosts of long-dead children who become his playmates, and a sixteenth-century witch who rescues him from mortal danger only when the, um, spirit moves her. Like Mowgli, Bod has a "retired" teacher who educates him in reading and history and other human learning, and he has a mentor, Silas, a being existing between life and death, who instructs him in the ways of the everyday world--and of that other world from which his family's enemies spring--and who ultimately helps him leave his hallowed refuge behind for the wider world of the living.

Bod grows up with the Freedom of the Graveyard, learning the secret ways of shades--fading, dreamwalking, haunting, and seeing in the dark--but knowing all the time that that man--one of the group of assassins all known as Jack--waits for him just outside the sanctuary of the graveyard gate.

But when Bod is five years old, he makes a friend among the living, a girl named Scarlet whose parents bring her to the graveyard to play inside the nature preserve which the old burial ground has become. Bod's connection with Scarlett inevitably draws him into the outside world and inevitably into both danger and the chance to make a life, a fully human life, in it.

Silas said, "Out there, the man who killed your family is, I believe, still looking for you, still intends to kill you."

Bod shrugged. "So?" he asked. "It's only death. I mean, all of my best friends are dead."

"Yes," Silas hesitated. "They are. And they are, for the most part, done with the world. You are not. You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished."

Despite its unique setting, The Graveyard Book is far from grim or terrifying, peopled as it is with a memorable community of spirits with all the marvelous vagaries of living people. The story is filled with humor and adventure, moral hazard and courageous, self-sacrificing deeds--everything an absorbing coming-of-age tale should have. As in A Wrinkle in Time, the The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Harry Potter series, among other well-known fantasies for young people, Gaiman plucks his young hero out of the everyday world and puts him in the company of fantastic characters and into the thick of the good vs. evil struggle between the seen and the unseen world.

No Sneeze, PLEASE! Chu's Day by Neil Gaiman

WHEN CHU SNEEZED,

BAD THINGS HAPPENED.

So, with this suspenseful bit of foreshadowing, begins Neil Gaiman's and Adam Rex's just-out picture book, Chu's Day (HarperCollins, 2013).

Chu is an mild-mannered, adorable panda toddler, his striped tee riding up over his little round belly, pilot's helmet and goggles on his head, who sets off on his day's adventures. First on the list is a trip to the local library, a busy place crowded with a crew of library patrons--mice who use long ladders to access the empty drawers of an old-time wooden card catalog to search the collection with their miniscule laptops, a platypus scaling a rolling ladder at the shelves, politely held steady by a gorilla. But there is a danger lurking in that innocuous setting:

THERE WAS OLD BOOK DUST IN THE AIR.

"ARE YOU GOING TO SNEEZE?" SAID MOTHER.

After a crescendo of prefatory AAAHs!, Chu says not.

Then, it's off to the diner with Dad, where a collection of assorted animal characters as varied as the Chalmun's Cantina bar scene in Star Wars, are slurping, sipping, and snacking. Unfortunately there is also a scent of pepper in the air there.

"AAH...AAAH...AAAAH....!" GOES CHU.

"ARE YOU GOING TO SNEEZE?" ASKS HIS FATHER.

Nope. False alarm.

Then the day ends with a family outing at the circus, a lavish "tree-ring" affair in a gaily-colored tent. Everyone is intent upon trying to watch all the daring acts at once.

"GUESS WHAT?" SAID CHU.

BUT NOBODY LISTENED.

With all the tension of an impending sneeze, this one ends in the catastrophic aaaAAchoooOOOOOOOO! we've been anticipating all along, as little Chu blows it all away--library, diner, circus, in a gratifying release of explosive giggles from young readers. The pairing of Newbery author Gaiman, master of the neo-gothic fantastical novel, (see his The Graveyard Book) and Coraline) and illustrator Adam Rex, equally known for his somewhat surreal but totally comic style, (see his Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich) is a perfect pairing here, sophisticated, sly, and altogether satisfying. Gaiman's narration is wryly deadpan, letting Rex's masterfully rich oil-painting illustrations extend the storytelling to its logical conclusion. Awww, Chu!! (Editor's Note: Pass the tissues around the story circle before you read this one aloud!)

Watch the book's trailer narrated by the author and see a somewhat sinister-looking Neil Gaiman with the real baby panda who inspired this sweet story on his lap, here.

Careful What You Dream Of: Coraline: The Movie

Well-read young viewers at or about the age of the movie's eleven-year-old heroine will find this animated 3-D movie, soothingly, albeit surrealistically, familiar. A spunky young girl finds herself in a cavernous old house with many oddities to explore, including an intriguing door which, when she ventures through it, leads to another world, a strangely beautiful but ultimately dangerous place. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (The Chronicles of Narnia), anyone?

Or how about a cross-tempered young girl, bored and displeased with her family, who follows a scampering rodent down a tunnel to a parallel world in which things are both familiar and frighteningly not what they seem. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass,right? This faithful frame story device works beautifully in the film of Neil Gaiman's parable of a child who "dreams" up better parents and learns that her real mom and dad, faults and all, are perhaps just what she needs.

Coraline is an all-unwilling new resident in a dilapidated but once grand old house, cut up into rambling apartments, far from her close friends and comforting old life. Her parents are chained to their laptops, telecommuting writers on deadline for a forthcoming garden catalog who are too stressed out to give her the attention she needs and demands. But when pushed out of their workspace to "explore" the house, Coraline discovers a tiny door wall-papered over and teases, begs, and whines until her mother locates the key and cuts through to open the door. Coraline is disappointed to find only a bricked-up wall behind, but that night in her dreams she follows scampering jumping mice through the door, down a glowing tunnel, and into a parallel version of her own life.

There, instead of a dusty, drab apartment strewn with unpacked boxes, she finds a stylish home peopled by her "other" parents, a funny, affectionate, and doting pair led by her "other mother," who cooks delicious-smelling dinners and plays games with her endlessly. At first, Coraline finds that when she falls asleep attended by her "other mother," she awakes in the real world, but when she points out that her faux parents have buttons sewn in instead of eyes, they offer to sew button eyes of her choice on her so that she can remain their doted-upon daughter forever. It's a Faustian bargain--endless smothering attention forever or her old life with her flawed but real parents.

Coraline chooses free will, but getting it back is something else. When she declines to be the dutiful daughter, her "other mom" drops the simpering mask and Coraline sees the selfish fleshless face behind it all. It is the fight of her life for the strong and resilient Coraline, who, with the aid of a sly and sage black cat and a new friend who shares the danger and helps win her wager with the witchly woman, battles her way back to her imperfect real life, a life wherein we see there is always a chance that she will get, not what she may want, but perhaps what she needs and possibly what she deserves.

Like the film, Coraline, in Gaiman's graphic novel book version, is not really a tale for the very young. It is best suited for 'tweens and young teens who are all-too-aware of their parents' imperfections, but still too green to know how hard perfection is to come by in the real world. Coraline's malaise with her family will resonate with this age group, as will her sturdy and courageous drive to take the difficult course to be her own imperfect self in an imperfect but open-ended world.

As the voice of Coraline, Dakota Fanning catches the right tone for her needy but sometimes brattish character, but Teri Hatcher's reading of the "other" mother's voice is spot on, drawn seemingly straight out of the mouths of those happy cartoon cooks illustrating the old Betty Crocker Cookbook. The stop-motion animation is perfectly suited to the dramatic surrealism of the film and the 3-D effects, while occasionally startling, are generally subtle and non-intrusive, never used just for effect but always to advance the mood and plot.

Neil Gaiman, who freely admits that his Newbery Award winning The Graveyard Book draws its framework straight from The Jungle Book(Unabridged Classics), has placed this tale well within the mainstream of children's literature from the Brothers Grimm through the Wild Things right up to the modern day, and director Sellick's translation of the story into cinema only gains artistically in the transition. Rated PG, this is a very good movie, possibly a classic-to-be, which has broad appeal for older children and for adults who will recognize the dark truths beneath the lively and stylized 3-D animation.

Sage Advice: Instructions by Neal Gaiman and Charles Vess

Touch the wooden gate in the wall you never saw before.

Say please before you open the latch.

Walk through the house. Take nothing. Eat nothing.

However, if any creature tells you it hungers, feed it.... If it cries to you that it hurts, if you can, ease its pain.

A young traveler, a puss in boots knight errant, begins a quest, a journey in which he sees many things, both novel and yet known, in a narrative in which there is the threat of danger and yet, dreamlike, there is no fear.

The deep well you walk past leads to Winter's realm. There is another land at the bottom of it.

If you turn around here, you can walk back safely. You will lose no face.

I will think no less of you.

Neil Gaiman's narrator guides the wanderer in a quest which leads him past images from familiar folk and fairy tales--an old woman in a wood who gives advice, a youngest princess who cannot be trusted, dragons who have, always, one vulnerable spot, and witches whose appetites always undo them. There are wolves whom you can trust with everything but your destination, a ferryman to whom you pass on the key to his freedom, and an eagle whose feather you must keep and whose back is yours upon which to soar.

Along the way there is good advice: "Do not be jealous of your sister. Know that diamond and roses are uncomfortable they tumble from your lips." "Don't forget your manners," and "trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn."

And at the mission's end, the quest becomes a homecoming.

Return the way you came. Do not look back....

When you reach the little house, the place where your journey started, you will recognize it, although it will seem much smaller than you remember.

And then go home. Or make a home. Or rest.

Poet-storyteller and Newbery Award winner Neil Gaiman's Instructions (Harper, 2010), set to Charles Vess' gorgeous and endlessly evocative illustrations flow like a vision set to the music of the simple but lyrical text of this allegorical picture book. Although the allusions in text and art benefit from some grounding in literature, their elemental nature make this book a rich experience for youngsters of all ages, even those now adults.

Gaiman, author of Newbery winner The Graveyard Book and the graphic novel/movie Coraline (Single-Disc Edition w/ 3D) has a prodigious talent for seamlessly blending the fantastic and fabular with the human story, and this picture book is a beautiful way to begin to experience that gift.

Flow It, Show It, Long As God Can Grow It: Crazy Hair by Neil Gaiman

"I don't mean to stare.

Mister, you've got crazy hair!"

Bonnie is a feisty girl who can't help remarking on the stranger's amazingly long, luxuriant and utterly wild locks. Even when he warns her that his hair is, well, unique...

"In my hair
Gorillas leap,
Tigers stalk,
And ground sloths sleep....

Hunters send in
Expeditions,
Radio back
Their positions.

Still, we've lost a dozen there,
Lost inside my crazy hair."

... she is unfazed. Bonnie whips out her special comb and tackles the tangle, only to find that the hair is a world of its own. Drawn inside the man's shock of hair, Bonnie finds another dimension, filled with bears, pirates, and adventure, where she gladly "dances with the dancers there, happy as a millionaire."

Fans of Gaiman's surrealistically styled work (Coraline: The Graphic Novel, The Graveyard Book, (reviewed here) and The Dangerous Alphabet, (reviewed here), will dive into this mysterious thatch with glee, despite the characteristic looming sense of, if not danger, at least a certain menacing ambience which underlies the dreamlike exuberance of the verse and art. McKean's angular and wispy drawings are juxtaposed with the realistic photographic portrayal of the hair itself, which swirls, twists, and curls through the pages in the same flow as Gaiman's words, set with great typographic variations, in a current of design which carries the reader's eyes through the pages seamlessly with the illustrations. Crazy Hair (HarperCollins, 2009)is sure to please the adventurous picture book fan with its inimitable style and spirit.