Neil GaimanGlogster Link to Graphic Novels

Neil GaimanBIOGRAPHICALBorn Nov. 10, 1960In EnglandPrecocious

Neil GaimanI loved comics when I was growing up, and I never saw any reason why they should be considered inferior. I thought they could have as much power and passion and elegance as any other medium.

Neil GaimanPROFESSIONALJournalismAlan MooreThe Sandman

75 volumes Ancient fables, myths, and legends woven into a new mythology for modern-day readers

7 brothers and sisters Destiny, Death, Dream, Desire, Despair, Delirium who was once Delight, and Destruction

Wizards attempted to end death by taking Death captive, but captured Dream (Morpheus) instead.

When he finally escapes he must face the changes that have gone on in his realm, and the changes in himself. Neil Gaiman

Neil GaimanSTYLEMythologyClarityChildren Layers and layers

Neil GaimanTHEMESRelationshipsReality/PerceptionThe QuestExperienceChange

A sleeping family, a gruesome murder, and nimble toddler orphaned, but not assassinated. The child escapes the scene of the crime and climbs the grassy hill to safety.The hill sits inside a cemetery, and in the cemetery are the spirits, ghosts and ghouls, who find the boy.

Newbery Award 2008

Neil GaimanI want to shed skins. I want to keep awake. I definitely have a feeling that if I'm not going forward, if I'm not learning something, then I'm dead.

Neil GaimanCORALINEIn another world behind a locked door, Coraline finds that she has two creepy alternate parents, with pale complexions and black button eyes, who wish to keep her. She struggles to escape back through the door and into her house, but finds that her real parents have been taken, and she must go back to save them.

The Wolves in the WallsLucy is convinced that the crackling, sneaking, creeping, crumpling noises she hears in the walls of her house must be wolves--and they are. Her mother scoffs.But the wolves do come out of the walls, and Lucy's family must abandon their house to the wolves' revelry, only to end up living inside the walls themselves.Gaiman could be saying: Vindicate children's fears. There are wolves in the walls, and so accordingly, there probably are real, child-eating monsters under the bed! But the wolves/monsters can also be defeated through courage and ingenuity. But he could also just be using these fears to craft a wonderfully creative story.

ResourcesQ & A with Neil Gaiman. This article originally appeared in PW's Children's Bookshelf. By Donna Freitas -- Publishers Weekly, 10/9/2008. http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/400282-Q_A_with_Neil_Gaiman.php.Fictionwise, supported by Barnes & Noble, contains a listing of Neil Gaimans ebooks with nice little summaries. http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/NeilGaimaneBooks.htmNeil Gaimans site dedicated to his novels, tours, conferences and read-alouds. www.mousecircus.com Neil Gaimans personal site. http://www.neilgaiman.com/Neil Gaimans facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/neilgaiman

One of the top ten living postmodern writersFrom his Sandman series, which collected nine Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, and three Harvey Awards. Sandman #19 became the first comic to ever win a literary award in 1991, when it brought home the World Fantasy Award for best short story.

Richard Mayhew is an unassuming young businessman living in London, with a dull job and a pretty but demanding fiancee. Then one night he stumbles across a girl bleeding on the sidewalk. He stops to help her--and the life he knows vanishes like smoke. Several hours later, the girl is gone too. And by the following morning Richard Mayhew has been erased from his world. His bank cards no longer work, taxi drivers won't stop for him, his hundred rents his apartment out to strangers. He has become invisible, and inexplicably consigned to a London of shadows and darkness a city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, that exists entirely in a subterranean labyrinth of sewer canals and abandoned subway stations. He has fallen through the cracks of reality and has landed somewhere different, somewhere that is Neverwhere. For this is the home of Door, the mysterious girl whom Richard rescued in the London Above. A personage of great power and nobility in this murky, candlelit realm, she is on a mission to discover the cause of her family's slaughter, and in doing so preserve this strange underworld kingdom from the malevolence that means to destroy it. And with nowhere else to turn, Richard Mayhew must now join the Lady Door's entourage in their determined--and possibly fatal--quest. Publishers Weekly Best Book (WINNER) Book Sense 76 Pick (WINNER) Child Magazine Best Book of the Year (WINNER) New York Public Library's "One Hundred Titles for Reading and Sharing" (WINNER) Amazon.com Editors Choice (WINNER) ALA Notable Childrens Book (WINNER) ALA Best Book for Young Adults (WINNER) New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age (WINNER) IRA/CBC Children's Choice (WINNER) Dorothy Canfield Fisher Childrens Book Award Masterlist (Vermont) (WINNER) Bram Stoker Award for Best Work for Young Readers (WINNER) Hugo Award for Best Novella (WINNER) School Library Journal Best Book (WINNER)