Neil wins the Hugo!

As most you, my Gentle Readers, know, I am a huge Neil Gaiman fan. He just won the Hugo for The Graveyard Book. He won! The Guardian book site has this lovely post about Neil's win, here, entitled "The Myth-Making Genius of Neil" . Here is the actual Guardian article on the win, "Neil Gaiman wins Hugo", here. Link to Neil's own post on his blog about the win, here.

I need to find some Sandman to try! Everyone raves about it, including the writer of the myth-making genius of Neil article. I might be the very last person on the planet to find a Sandman to try!! My children have seen Coraline the movie, my daughter loving it and my youngest son talking about the mother with the button eyes: "there was a mother with BUTTON EYES" and then insisting he never saw the movie. A very good friend watched it alone and had to keep stopping it and doing something else for a bit, before coming back to the movie. I still haven't seen it. I think the book is one of the scariest, one of the most deliciously frightening books with the bravest heroine ever. I'm not sure why, but The Graveyard Book wasn't as scary to me (except the beginning part, which is truly frightening in any book) as Coraline was. It was more melancholic, and really lingers in mind still, a year after reading it. The Dance Macabre, the living in the cemetary, the various ghosts he met, and Silas his guardian - they are all memorable, and The Graveyard Book is like no other. I'm awed that it won the Hugo, and very very happy it did. Congratulations to Mr Gaiman. My children thank him too.

Here is the link to the Hugo site and all the award winners this year: here.

Also found on the Guardian Book site, a lovely quiz about summer holidays in children's books, here. I scored 9 out of 11. It pays to read Enid Blyton! She is not in the same league as Gaiman, but still; my love of mysteries I can attibute in part to the Adventurous Four, Famous Five and Secret Seven.....