Clippings
The Spring 2003 Sneak Previews in Publisher’s Weekly notes that HarperCollins/Avon is releasing “…the first two Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman, based on a comic strip created by Gaiman and starring a young magician…”. If memory serves, these are actually being adapted by someone else, and will not be graphic novels.
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From a USA Today feature on children’s books:
…Diane Roback, the children’s book editor of Publishers Weekly, says that in 15 years she has never seen so many writers doing books for younger readers. Harry Potter may be an influence, she says, having exposed these authors to the field of children’s fantasy.
This is not “cashing in” on Rowling’s success, she says, but an “interesting and nice trend” that could yield some excellent literature. The July publication of sci-fi writer Neil Gaiman’s children’s book, Coraline, proves, for example, that “suspense knows no age.”…
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From Billboard:
Amos Plans ‘Scarlet’s Walk’ In Fall
Singer/songwriter Tori Amos has slated an Oct. 15 release for her next album, “Scarlet’s Walk.” The set will be her debut for Epic following a 13-year association with Atlantic, and is the follow-up to last year’s “Strange Little Girls.” A U.S. headlining tour is being set up for the fall, with international dates to follow, according to Epic.
Author Neil Gaiman, who wrote a story about the “Strange Little Girls” characters for Amos’ 2001 tour program, offers some insight into “Scarlet’s Walk” on the artist’s official Web site. “The CD’s about America — it’s a story that’s also a journey, that begins in L.A. and crosses the country, slowly heading east,” he writes. “America’s in there, and specific places and things, Native American history and pornography and a girl on a plane who’ll never get to New York, and Oliver Stone and Andrew Jackson and madness and a lot more. Not to mention a girl called Scarlet who may be the land and may be a person and may be a trail of blood.”
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Kris Naudus talks about the New York Coraline signing in this week’s edition of her column for CBEM, Comics Culture Shrapnel
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From Lloyd Sachs’ Chicago Sun Times article from 7/21, “All fired up for return of horror to big screen”:
…”Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten,” wrote G.K. Chesterton, as quoted in rising horror author Neil Gaiman’s new kids’ novel, Coraline . If Hollywood brushed aside its worries about offending anyone and made a realistic movie about the war against al-Qaeda and its virulent pals, it likely wouldn’t provide much in the way of inspiration or release, even with a blaring, flag-waving soundtrack. It wouldn’t engage our imagination the way a more symbolic or suggestive take on the subject would. It wouldn’t transcend itself.
It also might not get to us the way that children’s stories like Gaiman’s do. Having written the Sandman series of graphic novels, he gives us here a fractured fairy tale about a smart and resourceful 10-year-old who discovers an evil “other” mother beyond the locked door of a storage room and fights for the souls of her real parents. Coraline is one the most unsettling tales of its sort since little David discovered the implants in his mom’s and dad’s neck in the 1953 movie “Invaders from Mars.” But that soulless threat on the other side of the door can be anything you want, or anything you fear.