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Summary
Summary
Share Neil Gaiman's beautifully illustrated Instructions with creative, artful graduates and other travelers of all ages.
"A perfect reminder to always be on the lookout for magic and wonder. Sometimes, we need those two things the most."*
In this breathtaking jacketed picture book, Neil Gaiman's lyrical poem guides a novice traveler through the enchanted woods of a fairy tale--through lush gardens, a formidable castle, and over a perilous river--to find the way home again.
Illustrated in full color by Charles Vess, Instructions features lush images of mythical creatures, magical landscapes, and canny princesses. Its message of the value of courage, wit, and wisdom makes it a perfect gift.
* Brightly, citing "Books That Teach Kids What It Means to Be a Kind Person"
Author Notes
Neil Gaiman was born in Portchester, England on November 10, 1960. He worked as a journalist and freelance writer for a time, before deciding to try his hand at comic books. Some of his work has appeared in publications such as Time Out, The Sunday Times, Punch, and The Observer. His first comic endeavor was the graphic novel series The Sandman. The series has won every major industry award including nine Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, three Harvey Awards, and the 1991 World Fantasy Award for best short story, making it the first comic ever to win a literary award.
He writes both children and adult books. His adult books include The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which won a British National Book Awards, and the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel for 2014; Stardust, which won the Mythopoeic Award as best novel for adults in 1999; American Gods, which won the Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, SFX, and Locus awards; Anansi Boys; Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances; and The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction, which is a New York Times Bestseller. His children's books include The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish; Coraline, which won the Elizabeth Burr/Worzalla, the BSFA, the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Bram Stoker awards; The Wolves in the Walls; Odd and the Frost Giants; The Graveyard Book, which won the Newbery Award in 2009 and The Sandman: Overture which won the 2016 Hugo Awards Best Graphic Story.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
"Touch the wooden gate in the wall you never saw before," invites Gaiman's poem, first published in A Wolf at the Door (2000), reborn as a lavishly illustrated small-format picture book. A bipedal, bushy-tailed cat, wearing attire befitting Robin Hood, enters a fairy tale landscape filled with subtle and obvious allusions to familiar characters and stories. A cottage door leads him into a hallway of dramatic arches where a cat with an injured paw becomes his companion ("if any creature tells you that it hungers, feed it. If it tells you that it is dirty, clean it"). The wanderers press on, encountering a castle containing three sequestered princesses ("Do not trust the youngest. Walk on"), a ghostly ferryman, and other creatures. Recalling his work on Gaiman's Blueberry Girl, Vess's compositions are distinguished by elegant, winding lines-gnarled vines, plumes of smoke, dragon tails-and intimate frames that evoke moments of gentle wisdom. Young readers should relish the chimerical vision while older Gaiman fans should grasp the underlying suggestion that the compass used to navigate fairy tales can also guide us in the real world. All ages. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
Gaiman and Vess take readers through a fantastical landscape, advising them along the way with directions both grand and minute. The text, first published in A Wolf at the Door, riffs on fairy-tale conventions and vacillates between mystical and didactic. Vess's illustrations, starring a Puss-in-Boots-type character, are expansive but a little bland. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
The flap designates this picture book from the award-winning team of Gaiman and Vess as all ages, which is cute but perhaps overly optimistic. Carrying the tagline Everything You'll Need to Know on Your Journey, it could be described as Gaiman's answer to Dr. Seuss' Oh, the Places You'll Go (1990): a catlike creature with a foxlike tail travels through a series of fairy-tale settings, guided by a narrator's instructions. But where the Seuss book has become a staple graduation gift, its nonsensical language easily translating into simple life lessons, Gaiman's seems less likely to find that kind of broad, lasting appeal. Some of the instructions pertaining to real life are straightforward enough ( If any creature tells you that it hungers, feed it ), but others seem to pertain to a story that's not told here why, for example, should we not trust the youngest of three princesses? References to Winter's realm (drawn as a cold-looking, modern city) and a worm at the heart of the tower hint at grown-up concerns best avoided but, again, lack needed context. Certainly this will appeal to grown-ups who like a little magic in their lives, but children may be somewhat puzzled. Yet maybe that's all right. Vess' timeless watercolor-and-pencil illustrations, especially those of the cat-fox riding a wise eagle, a silver fish, and a gray wolf, are simply gorgeous and may entice kids to sprawl with the book on the carpet, figuring it all out. And maybe if they imagine their own answers to half-understood questions, then these instructions will have succeeded.--Graff, Keir Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Seventeen-year-old Cassel is at a definite disadvantage. We meet him as he's teetering on an icy rooftop at his boarding school, wearing only boxer shorts and with no memory of how he got there. But his real problem is that he comes from a family of "curse workers" and mobsters, and is haunted by nightmares about a white cat and a murdered friend. The action is occasionally confusing, but parts of the book, the first in a new series for Black, have the polish of a noir thriller. SCHOOL! Adventures at the Harvey N. Trouble Elementary School. Written by Kate McMullan. Inspired and illustrated by George Booth. Feiwel & Friends. $12.99. (Ages 6 to 9) "School!" almost reels in a tornado of silly wordplay and fast-paced events, with students like Dewey Haveto and little Izzy Normal in a chorus of confusion. Booth's comical portraits look like cameos of his beloved New Yorker cartoons - the janitors Iquit and Quitoo, tossing their brooms aside, could have just stepped off one of those crowded country porches. THANKING THE MOON Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. Written and illustrated by Grace Lin. Knopf. $16.99. (Ages 4 to 8) Glowing lanterns give cheerful punctuation to this evocative introduction to the Chinese harvest festival - this year, on Sept 22. According to notes in the back, "children, allowed to stay up late, parade with lanterns in the moonlight. The paper lanterns are usually round like the moon or have the shape of animals, like rabbits (a white rabbit is said to live on the moon)." Lin's deeply tinted gouaches make a nighttime picnic of mooncakes and round green fruits look especially magical. SPORK Written by Kyo Maclear. Illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault. Kids Can Press. $16.95. (Ages 3 to 7) Arsenault's expressive drawings of an unhappy spork are instantly winning. With all the advantages of spoon and fork, how could this fellow remain unloved? But he just doesn't fit in. (Some glowering forks, whispering and pointing, look like the mean kids in a school hallway.) The spork tries founding himself off with a hat, then makes himself "more forkish" with a crown - until he becomes the perfect foil for just the right small chubby hand. THE FANTASTIC SECRET OF OWEN JESTER By Barbara O'Connor. Frances Foster/Farrar, Strong & Giroux. $15.99. (Ages 8 to 12) Owen Jester should be having the time of his life: he's captured the "biggest, greenest, slimiest" bullfrog in Carter, Ga, and not only that, a mysterious crate that fell off a train nearby yielded an incredible find. But how to get the "Water Wonder 4000" down to the pond? And can his best friends stand the brainy know-it-all girl next door long enough to get her to help? O'Connor has perfect pitch in this comic adventure, which ends with a happy resolution everyone, even the frog, can live with. INSTRUCTIONS Written by Neil Gaiman. Illustrated by Charles Vess. Harper/HarperCollins Publishers. $14.99. (All ages) Like a more impish version of Dr. Seuss's "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" Gaiman's book offers riddling advice that could be for young or old. The stern voice giving instructions also teases ("the 12 months sit about a fire, warming their feet, exchanging tales. They may do favors for you, if you are polite"), while Vess's fairy-tale landscape is an apt setting for the words of wisdom: "Trust the wolves, but do not tell them where you are going" ; "Do not be jealous of your sister." JULIE JUST
