Pros: An abundance of creativity, Lucy to the rescue
Cons: Definitely too eerie for young readers
The Bottom Line:
Well done Gaiman/McKean, you quickly brought back my nighttime anxieties but I really enjoyed your edgy book. Children who still have monsters in their rooms should avoid this.
pestyside's Full Review: Neil Gaiman - The Wolves In The Walls
David McKean's work incorporates collage, drawing, found-objects collages, computer generated and manipulated art, painting, and photography into unusual combinations, a seemingly perfect complement to Neil Gaiman's story The Wolves in the Walls. The two created an unsettling situation that feeds into those nighttime fears and fantasy's endured by many children.
Lying in bed, late at night, listening to the quiet in the room and the cacophony of noises in the walls leads many children to be suspicious of the evils that might be lurking within the walls that surround their bedrooms. How safe is that bedroom? Young Lucy didn't have to retreat to her bedroom, she heard noises all day but nobody else admitted hearing these sounds.
"Lucy heard noise. The noises were coming from inside the walls. They were hustling noses and bustling noises. They were crinkling noises and crackly noises. They were sneaking, creeping, crumpling noises." She thought there were wolves in the walls.
When she told her mother mom suggested it must be mice. When Lucy insisted that there were wolves in the walls (I don't know why she determined it was wolves.) her mother replied "I'm sure it's not wolves for you know what they say...If the wolves come out of the walls, then it's all over." Again, I don't know what IT is either but this is the same response she got from her dad and brother when she tried to warn them about the wolves in the walls. Late one night, after everyone was fast asleep, including Lucy, the noises got louder and louder. She was awakened by howling, yowling, bumping and thumping and while hanging on to her stuffed pig puppet it was all over - the wolves came out of the walls.
As if running from a fire in the house they gathered each other and everyone (mom, dad, brother and Lucy) ran down the stairs and huddled out in the dark of the garden for the rest of the night. The wolves partied in the house. Brave Lucy snuck back to the house where she monitored their eating jam and toast and watching television. They just made themselves right at home. There was a "huge wolf, fat as anything asleep on her bed." She snuck through the house, through the walls, entering by way of the hole they created.
Meanwhile, her family remained camped out in the garden pondering their choices. Perhaps they could live in a tree house or a hot-air balloon or move to a desert island. Lucy recommends returning to live in the walls of the house, after all the wolves are in the house now and not the walls. It beat living in the garden.
What they found inside was outrageous - the wolves were partying hard with all of their stuff. They were dancing, telling jokes, playing video games, and playing dad's second best tuba.
Many of us had demons that lived inside the walls, all of those demons were naturally dark and scary and unrealistic. Neil Gaiman's and Dave McKean's book represents those dark, scary and unrealistic demons.
Neil Gaiman's twisted tale might seem scary but it has an unexpected hero. Lucy knew there were wolves in the wall and she also figured out how to regain their house. The premise of wolves in the wall is quirky but one that feeds into nightmares and as I understand it, this evolved out of one of his daughter's nightmares. You know what they say, give a creative author-dad a nightmare and he can turn it into a book. Once that happens, it's all over.
Dave McKean's surreal art is gritty and scratchy mixing a variety of media. In one two-page spread the wolves are exploding out of the wall, dramatically scratchy, drawn in pen. If told the right way I can see a child leaping a few feet from their seats at that point. Some pages use computer generated and manipulated images. McKean's art will excite and astonish readers with its creativity and energy. Just like Gaiman's storytelling, McKean continually surprises with each page.
This is not their first collaboration, nor their last: Coraline, The Day I Swapped My Dad for 2 Goldfish, and most recently Crazy Hair. When it comes to creating a sense of odd the pairing of McKean and Gaiman becomes oddly perfect.
Now comes the difficult part, my recommendations. This book can seem dark and sinister, it can be humorous and wildly silly, and it can be heroic. Some children worry about the monsters in their closets and creatures wandering through the walls. I always worried about aliens climbing through the mirrors at night while my sister was convinced demons hid in the closet and unless the door was closed they would creep out. We all have those creep-out moments and I don't recommend this to young children still actively dealing with those issues. However, consider that this also provides a solution and once you get past the initial darkness of The Wolves in the Walls, this really becomes an imaginative story. It is a picturebook, although the author might consider it a simple graphic novel, it is a picturebook with appeal for 10 and 11 year olds, unless they're afraid of elephants in the walls.
Lucy is sure there are wolves living in her walls--and everyone says if the wolves make their way out it is all over for her and her family. A New Yor...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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