5-Minute Time Out: Neil Gaiman
Kiddie lit's prince of darkness has created the perfect shower gift.
by Gwynne Watkins
March 20, 2009
Among Neil Gaiman's memorable literary creations are a demon family with buttons for eyes (Coraline), a boy raised by ghosts in a graveyard (Newbury Medal-winner The Graveyard Book), a fallen star who comes to life as a girl (Stardust), and a jester who can talk to buildings (the film Mirrormask). So when Neil Gaiman describes Blueberry Girl as "a very odd little book," one has to wonder — what does Neil Gaiman consider odd?
Maybe what's odd to Gaiman is that he, of all the unlikely writers, has created the perfect gift book for expectant mothers. Blueberry Girl is a poetic wish for a baby girl, illustrated with fantastic beauty by Stardust artist Charles Vess. Gaiman wrote the text nine years ago as a gift for his friend Tori Amos, who had coined her unborn daughter "the blueberry." The poem was never intended to be published, but the author eventually "got tired of copying it out by hand for people who would phone me up and say, 'You know that Blueberry Girl thing you did? I heard it once and it's beautiful and I have a friend who's having a baby, and could you give me a copy?'" (In exchange for making her poem public, Gaiman is donating portion of proceeds from Blueberry Girl to Tori Amos' charity RAINN.)
Neil Gaiman spoke to Babble about writing bedtime stories, raising children in the internet age, and his least favorite children's book of all time. — Gwynne Watkins
Hi, this is Gwynne from Babble, the parenting website —
I looked at it the other day.
Oh, you did! What did you think?
I liked it. I was glad that I was no longer — well, I'm still parenting, I guess. I have a twenty-five-year-old, a twenty-three-year-old, and a fourteen-and-a-half-year old — but no longer doing that sort of parent-y thing with incredibly small ones.
What are your memories from that time? Anything on Babble hit a nerve with you?
"It's really sad — I miss storytelling."
Well, the whole thing comes rushing back. And also, the difference between the first, the second and the third. The first child — you walk around absolutely terrified that they won't get to do something. You're going, "What do you mean, they walk? Do we teach them to walk? Should we do walking training?" Then time passes, with the second one you've started figuring it out, and by the third you're just holding on to every second. "No, no, no it's okay! You'll walk! Let's enjoy this little bit first." You realize how incredibly evanescent it is.
I'm quite sure that you once told bedtime stories to your children. Do you still?
It's really sad — I miss storytelling. Round about the time my daughter Maddy — now the fourteen-year-old — reached her early eleventh year, she lost interest. And it was a bit sad because my older daughter had always loved doing her homework near to wherever we were reading, so she could pretend she was too old and too cool. When I did The Graveyard Book, I went on a reading tour for it instead of a signing tour. I read every chapter, one at each stop, and that was I think in many ways because I missed the actual action of reading aloud so much.
I talk to a lot of writers for Babble, and most of them claim that they don't make a distinction between the writing they do for children and the writing they do for adults: it is what it is, and they don't try to have an audience in mind. But your adult work is so adult — does that gap between children's books and adult books exist for you?
It does and it doesn't. I'm very aware that if I'm writing something — even if it's a picture book — that a child is going to experience, then I'm writing something that an adult is going to have to read — and not just going to have to read once, but if the child likes it, read three times a night for the next eight months. So when I did things like The Wolves in the Walls, which is very much a children's picture book, I did it from the perspective of, "I'm going to put language in here that will be fun for an adult to read. Remembering the hell of some of the books I had to read to my children...
©2009 Gwynne Watkins and Babble
About the Author
|
|
Related Articles
|
|
Gwynne Watkins was Babble's founding Senior Editor. She has written for a variety of web and print publications, and her theatrical work has been produced throughout the New York area. Her new family musical, Tea with Chachaji, will premiere in early 2010. |
|
|
-
by Gwynne Watkins
A chat with the creator of everyone's favorite pigeon.
-
by Walter Kirn
My kids are learning about death one bad dream and dead animal at a time.
-
by Cole Gamble
How were these ever considered "family films"?
|
