New Yorker Profile of Neil Gaiman

Gothic horror was thoroughly out of fashion in children’s literature when, in the early nineteen-nineties, the writer Neil Gaiman began to work on “Coraline,” a book aimed at “middle readers”—aged nine to twelve—in which he reimagined Clifford’s demon as “the other mother,” an evil and cunning anti-creator who threatens to destroy his young protagonist. “The idea was, look, if the Victorians can do something that deeply unsettles kids, I should be able to do that, too,” he told me recently. Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/01/25/100125fa_fact_goodyear#ixzz0d0m8QbwH