This week’s Sunday Read is an article by Gaby Wood for The Telegraph about Neil Gaiman’s latest children’s book The Sleeper and the Spindle, as well as an excerpt from the book.
The book, which is beautifully illustrated by Chris Riddell, is a mash-up of two fairy tales, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White.
Gaiman says that writing this book made him feel “like some kind of alchemist” because of how he combined different elements of two different fairy tales to create a story that resembles the old ones, but is really an entirely new thing.
Wood says that “fairy tales shape our worldview and stalk our literature” and teach us the old values of our culture. But, she shows, fairy tales are also vehicles for carrying new values, as this book does. Gaiman says he is fed up with stories in which women are rescued by men. This is a story in which women demonstrate agency rather than apathy.
Read the article:
“You don’t need princes to save you,” says Neil Gaiman, speaking about his new fairy tale, The Sleeper and the Spindle. “I don’t have a lot of patience for stories in which women are rescued by men.” And so, in his slim, gilded, wicked book, a beautiful young queen calls off her own wedding and sets out to save a neighbouring kingdom from its plague of sleep.
The brilliance of Gaiman’s story – which is spellbindingly illustrated by Chris Riddell – lies in the elements he has chosen for his mash–up.
Now read an excerpt from the book from Issuu:
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Book details
- The Sleeper and the Spindle by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Chris Riddell
EAN: 9781408859643
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