Neil Gaiman Profile

The New Yorker is running a fascinating profile of Neil Gaiman, easily one of my very favorite living authors. Here's an interesting pull quote that touches on an aspect of children's publishing that's been bugging me for some time:

"...when he showed an early draft to an editor in 1991, he was told it was unpublishable: far too frightening for kids. (Gaiman maintains that adults are more afraid of “Coraline” than children are.)"

Unpublishable. Yup. Here's hoping that Gaiman's popularity and high sales will help editors rethink silly notions about what constitutes a literary threat "to the children". I loved "dark tales" as a boy and have a sneaking suspicion that kids these days still do.