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Lady Fancifull

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Lady Fancifull

Tag Archives: Chris Riddell

Neil Gaiman – The Sleeper and The Spindle. Illustrated by Chris Riddell

03 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by Lady Fancifull in Children's and Young Adult Fiction

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Book Review, Children's Book Review, Chris Riddell, Fantasy Fiction, Neil Gaiman, The Sleeper and The Spindle

Fairy-tale mash-up bon-bon

The Sleeper and The SpindleI hesitated a lot about reviewing this here, as it only just makes my 4 star minimum, rounded up from 3 1/2 for the real book only (and a generous 1 star for the Kindle or ebook version). Do NOT get this as an download for a dedicated ereader

Chris Riddell’s illustrations are at least 50% of the delight of this, you will rue the day if you do eread. (I did, and I do) Secondly, this is not really for children – at least not very young ones, its a little too sophisticated and unsettling. I think a child should probably have a 2 digit birthday before embarking. And it may be particularly welcomed by girls due to the strong central character, who is a queen, not a princess and boldly goes where princes fear to tread!

Neil Gaiman’s The Sleeper and The Spindle, is a kind of mash-up hybrid of Snow White and The Seven Dwarves (except that austerity has obviously hit fairy-land too, as we are down to only 3) and The Sleeping Beauty – though there are sly little nods to several other fairy tales which creep in as well – it’s a bit like `spot the fairy celebrity!’ and I won’t reveal them because it would spoil a reader’s enjoyment and `aha’! moments

Queen and Dress

Part of the delight of an earlier Gaiman novel, The Graveyard Book (which I have in paper version) was Riddell’s illustrations, so I was expecting good things with this one. Sometimes illustrations fare reasonably well in the ereader format, but this is not the case here, as Riddell’s style is so full of fine details, which can’t really be seen properly, as if you try to zoom in, to get detail, you then lose the whole. This story (it is a mere 72 pages long, with several pages of illustrations) though full of some lovely little twists and spooky strangenesses, not to mention redundancies of princes, who needs them! – is a moderately long short story, a mere mouthful of a read. It seems overpriced on eReader, purely because those lovely illustrations, black, white, gold, which you can see on the Look Inside, don’t translate into the dedicated eRead format.

Chris Riddell

Chris Riddell

Those who are happy to read on other devices, to get colour, and are not bothered by reading on traditional screens, could try a download sample and see if it works for you

The story on its own is probably a little slight; unillustrated, I’d probably have felt a little cheated and wished that Gaiman had published several different shortish fairy tale mash-ups in one volume.

It’s not in the same league, illustration or story-wise with Gaiman’s The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains which was beautifully illustrated by Eddie Campbell, and won a ringing 5 star from me (in real book version) but that was because the illustrations were in full and luscious colour, and far more comprehensively integrated with the text.

Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman

This story has a more technical mix of horror and humour, but is inventive, as Gaiman reliably is

I believe it may ONLY be available on eRead in the States at the moment, with wood book becoming available in September. Wait, Wait, WAIT!

The Sleeper and The Spindle Amazon UK
The Sleeper and The Spindle Amazon USA

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Neil Gaiman – The Graveyard Book

08 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by Lady Fancifull in Children's and Young Adult Fiction, Fiction, Reading, Whimsy and Fantastical

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Book Review, Children's Book Review, Chris Riddell, Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

Being Human for 10-12s. And for those much older who stay in touch with their inner 10-12s!

draft_lens6128082module48469412photo_1266058639the_graveyard_book_neil_gGaiman is a wonderfully imaginative writer, full of dark flair. The premise in this book, has, through nefarious means, a young child losing his family. He is reared by a motley collections of ghosts who live by their graves in the local graveyard. There’s a whole collection of ….entities…who inhabit the world, our ordinary, living reality, and, various representative of other kinds of existence.

There’s a lot of humour in the book, quite a lot of sly education – the young reader will pick up snippets about history, medicine, literature, politics etc from the encounters the young hero makes. There’s also some delicate handling of deeper matter – hints at what lies just over the border of adolescence, also bullying, revenge, death and loss.

Graveyard Book Chris Riddell Chapter 7_1

220px-Chris_Riddell_Feb_2010

Riddell

And, of course, there are the wonderful illustrations by Chris Riddell. Whatever the charms this book may have as an audio book, losing these beautiful illustrations at pertinent points of the story would be a huge, huge loss

Gaiman

Gaiman

Sadly (to my eyes) the American version uses a different illustrator, whose work appears to be blockier, heavier, cruder, and done with broad brush strokes, rather than the intricacy and fine detail which Riddell’s work, above, illustrates.

I guess Kindle readers won’t have a choice as downloads will depend on location, but I know I’d be prepared to scour the UK site for a paper copy of Riddell, if i had a choice – see the difference in the styles, with Dave McKean’s version below

Ggraveyard McKean
Oh – and for those who chance upon this who don’t live in the UK – Being Human was a blackly comedic BBC series, involving a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost who set up house together and live within our ordinary society – so ordinary that the werewolf and the vampire in the first series work as hospital porters!

I personally lost interest after 3 of the 4 major characters left after the third series; it was a surprisingly good series, with excellent scripts and performers, and gained a cult following from all sorts of people, not just its target audience of young adults or late teens.  There was a later North American version of the series.

The Graveyard Book Amazon UK
The Graveyard Book Amazon USA

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