neil gaiman night

couldn't sleep again last night. could've been the humidity. could've been post-vacation stress. anyway, decided to start reading the neil gaiman picture book that cathy lent me. The Wolves in the Walls--"when the wolves start coming out of the walls, it's all over. everybody knows that." love the art. it's a montage of watercolors (i think) and photos. great story, too, as probably only neil gaiman could conceive of. i mean, i've read some of his Sandman stories, as well as his novel Neverwhere, but i never thought he'd be great at writing children's stories, too.

after, i still wasn't sleepy, so i thought i'd start a few chapters of the other neil gaiman book cathy lent, Coraline. of course, as usual, i ended up reading the whole thing, even though my eyes were already stinging a little from tiredness. this one i'd love to see as a movie. just like Neverwhere, it was about a parallel universe. and it was just as scary, even though it's a children's book. i especially love it because Coraline's "sidekick" is a black cat (although, of course, cats will never be sidekicks) who refuses to be named--"Cats don't have names. Now, you people have names because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names."

and even though he wrote it in a relatively short space, the world he created was satisfying, with no irritating loose ends. writing a children's novel i think is definitely harder than writing a grown-up novel. i fell asleep dreaming of the worlds hiding inside my closet, which i had left open--accidentally, or maybe not--the whole night.