Click on the "comment" button below to leave your blog post. I suggest you type your response first in a word document, and then copy and paste it into the comment box. Your blog post should be at least 500 words of original prose (do not duplicate anything other bloggers have already said here) in which you engage with the text for the week critically AND pose an original discussion question. Be sure to write your full name and word count at the bottom of your post. The cut-off time for this blog post is Monday, March 17 at midnight.Discussion Leaders: Alyssa, Rainy, Chelcie, Kaitlyn, Amanda W., Travis, Derek, Liz
The Wolves in the Walls
ReplyDeleteWritten by Neil Gaiman and Illustrated by Dave McKean
I personally did not really enjoy this book but I’m glad I read it. It was definitely different than any other children’s book that I have ever read. The cover was just scary and it brought me back to being scared easily as a child. The pointy and jagged edges of the pictures and letters made the book seem scarier than it was. The use of actual wolf eyes for the eyes in the walls looking at you made it more dramatic and proved there were actual wolves in the walls. The color that the illustrator used throughout the book is very dark shades. There are some red colors that symbolize blood and danger but he mostly used dark colors like blue and black. The wolves have yellow and orange eyes, which make them, seem frightening.
The font that the author uses in his book is sometimes white and sometimes black depending on the background color. It’s not a very warm feel good book either. The font is sometimes bolded or bigger on certain words. On pages 3 and 4 where Lucy is watching her brother play video games and her mom is making jam is where the font is sometimes larger for certain words like walls, creeping, and crumpling. This makes the book have a non-formal feeling to it. The author cleverly used good describing words of what the noises that Lucy heard, sounded like. There is a few rhyming words and alliteration was used in the book. For example, on page 3 and 4 there are the words: hustling and bustling, crinkling and crackling, sneaking and crumpling noises.
Lucy and her family almost seem transparent or ghost like looking. They do not have much color to them and its kind of sick looking. The wolves on the other hand sometimes were sketched and then sometimes were full colored. On page 32 it is just a dark silhouette of the wolves with the tongues hanging out and their yellow eyes protruding out of their head. On page 33 they are fully colored in almost a grey white color. On page 37 the wolves are sketched again with no coloring and just the same color as the background. The have what looks like blood all over their lips but it’s really the jam. I think this book is darker than it really seems to be and that is all because of the colors that they illustrator uses. If you just read the words then it isn’t to frightening but if you see the pictures than it adds more details and dimension to the children’s book.
At the very end I thought it was very cute when the pig-puppet grabbed started talking to Lucy about the elephants in the walls. The personification that was used along with the dialogue is something that young children can relate to. I know when I was little I would pretend that my toys and stuff animals were real and my friends. I wonder if children actually can relate to this book or find it interesting.
How did the color in this book affect the mode of the story? How would you use this book to teach young children? And what lesson would you teach them?
Word Count: 556
The Wolves in the Walls
ReplyDeleteWritten by Neil Gaiman and Illustrated by Dave McKean
I had never heard of this book, and so when reading it I had no idea what to expect. I immediately noticed the unique artwork that my roommate aptly dubbed as “trippy” as I went through the first couple of pages. Lucy evidently grew up in a house similar to mine in the fact that the house I grew up in had animals in the walls. My house was one of the oldest houses in Chelsea. There were animals in the ceiling that would make all sorts of noises. Naturally, me being a kid I thought about everything except the most logical explanations. But eventually I did come to realize they were only rats, bats, and squirrels. The story starts out with Lucy looking a bit crazy. But she was correct in thinking there were wolves in her walls. The wolves came out of the walls like bats out of hell. It shows the three wolves who are made up of pointy shapes with sharp teeth running out of the walls and they look like they may have early onset rabies. Not exactly what you want to see rushing out of your walls.
It was interesting that the people in the story act so matter-of-fact about the wolves being in the walls. “Oh yea, if the wolves come out we’re all dead. Another thing I found interesting about this story was that the illustrations consisted of real pictures mixed with hand drawn art and what appears to be computer animation, or at least mimics it. Once Lucy’s family finally realizes there are wolves in the wall, they all rush to the garden like it was a rehearsed fire drill. Instead of getting a hotel the family decides to keep an eye on the wolves while throwing out ideas for new places to live. Lucy being the smart one tells everyone they should stop thinking about new places to live and start thinking about getting their house back. Luckily for the pig-puppet Lucy couldn’t sleep without her. This brings her into the house where we get to see the wolves acting like humans and trashing the house.
The family slowly begins to lose their minds, coming up with all sorts of ridiculous ideas for where they should move to because it’s obvious they’ll never get their house back. The family finally sneaks into their own house and when they are sleeping in the middle of the night the wolves are having a party! The wolves partied by taking the things the family liked and destroying them. The wolves’ brazen disrespect for the family’s personal property would be the straw that breaks the family’s back. They armed themselves and charged out at the wolves producing immediate panic. The tables were then turned. The wolves howled “The people have come out of the walls! It’s all over!” which is exactly what the family said when the wolves came bursting out of the walls. The family then slowly restores everything in the house except for the fathers 2nd best tuba “which had sustained severe jam damage”. Then the book has a clever ending where the reader finds out that there will soon be elephants coming out of the house’s walls hah.
Discussion Questions: Why do you think the author choose wolves instead of any other animal? How would you describe the mood of this story; does it change slowly or suddenly? What do you think about the wolf on page 44? (yellow eye in a green panel).
The first time reading Neil Gaiman's The Wolves in the Walls I was actually impressed. There has only been a couple of books that we have read this semester thus far that I have enjoyed on the first read through. I was taken a little off-guard though by the illustrations, but I think it is just because they're very different from what I've been exposed to in the past. This is not a bad thing either, the illustrations were magnificent. I really enjoyed the use of color, and the different range of the spectrum used on different pages to invoke very different emotions.
ReplyDeleteLike all of the stories we have read in class, I read this one a second time as well. I thought it was interesting reading this story, and reading the three little pigs; and seeing the correlation between them. It also reminded me of the story of the boy who cried wolf. It was interesting how this story reflected a lot of tales, and it also reminded me of many that we have read in class. There are pages that remind me of The Arrival, and how there are panels that tells a story. There are lines such as “a scrambling, rambling rustling in the walls”, That remind me of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax.
I decided to google Neil Gaiman to learn a little bit about him, which is something I do not normally do with authors, but his name sounded very familiar. Upon reading his wikipedia page, I found where I have seen his name before. This is because he wrote a couple of episodes of “Doctor Who” which is a show that actually recently got done watching. It is interesting to see a children book author be able to write something that is very much relate-able to an adults life, although I do not know why I am surprised at this point seeing as we had an author that wrote for playboy.
Perhaps my favorite page in the book in the page the depicts the wolves with the jam on their face and paws. It looks like blood, and is very creepy looking. It reminds me a lot of a little red riding hood variant that ends up with little red being eaten. Then the next page is a wolf playing a tuba, which is very comical after this somewhat scary page. Perhaps the best and worst part of this story though is the end. She says that there are now elephants in the walls. This reminds me of Hollywood’s cheap way of setting up a movie for a sequel. At the same time though it is funny because now they have a huge problem. There has only been one movie that I can recall that did this sort of setup in a successful way, and that is “500 days of summer”.
Overall this was my favorite book to read in class so far, especially the first time around. Perhaps the most interesting thing was that the author also wrote for one of my favorite TV. Shows which is super cool.
Word Count :518
Discussion questions:
-This story is very Graphic novel/story like, similar to Shaun Tan's The Arrival Could the story Wolves in the Walls be told without any of the words, in true graphic novel form?
The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman
ReplyDeleteThere is one word that perfectly describes this book: random. Random, random, random. The plot is random. The font is random. The images are random.
The plot seems sporadic with the second-best tuba and pig-puppet. Somehow, the author intertwines an intricate story that circles back to mimic the beginning of the story. Some of the word choices that were made seem to represent an older audience rather than the assumed child audience. The narrator had mentioned, “And he laughed for a long time at his own joke, although it had not been a particularly good one” is reference to the brother. This sentence seems misplaced in a children’s book because I can imagine an adult saying those exact words and cannot picture a child doing the same.
The font changes between the narrator and other characters that are speaking. It frequently switches from a scary-looking font, to a bold version. This bolding seems to give the same emphasis on the word as would italics. The font also changes from large to teeny-tiny to give the impression of whispering or shouting, like on page 10, “’I can feel them in my tummy. And pig-puppet thinks it’s wolves as well.’” Another example would be on pages 15-16, when the wolves come bursting out of the walls. The differing weighted letters and large font forces the image to seem like a loud scene.
The best part about this book is the images. I am positive that if I were to read this book over and over, I would recognize a whole new set of different images from the first read-through. As mentioned earlier, the images seem to be completely random. The illustrator, Dave McKean, tastefully constructed each page to be a work of art separate from the words. On the cover, and several succeeding pages, McKean chose to use real wolf eyes to create the illusion that the wolves were real. The cover, with Lucy drawing the wolf seems to infer that the wolves may be completely made up. However, the part of the plot that involves the family running out of the house suggests otherwise.
The illustrations could have easily taken days, if not longer, to create due to their numerous layers. Each layer seems to add texture that was lacking before. If the book could somehow be dissected, it would be interesting to see what tone would arise if many of the base layers were deleted. I have a feeling that it would de-clutter the page and make the story seem more appropriate for a children audience. The layers add depth which makes the book more appropriate for an adult audience in its current state. Deep shadows are casted on many of the photos to send warnings that the book is scary in nature. I found myself thinking that children would easily have nightmares from reading this book, or having the book read to them. The mix of realistic images, drawings and something computer-based, give the book that layer, ominous tone. The reader knows that something is “not right” the entire way through.
Questions:
What seems more likely to affect the tone of the book: font characteristics, images or plot? Did Lucy actually see the wolves or were they a figment of her imagination? Is this book intended for an older or young audience and why?
Kaitlyn Kent
Word Count: 568
The collage of the pictures are scary but intriguing. They remind me of a a type of computer generated style that I am amazed the illustrator was able to capture on paper. This style makes the graphics looks like they are really animated.
ReplyDeleteThe text is very simple as there is a focus on verbs in setting up the story. The text itself acts as a part of the graphics as they angle different ways changing in font size and thickness. This helps to emphasize the repetition on page four as “they were…noises” over and over again. Internal rhyme is used in “hustling” and “bustling” as well as alliteration such as “creeping” and “crumpling”.
The reader does get a sense of Dadaism with real photographs used in the following pages. Lucy, the main character has a mother who is not the average depiction of a mother as she seems to have very short hair and looks quite alien. The straight edginess is very makes the reader feel uncomfortable while being sucked into this whole new world of uncertainty. There are close-ups showing gutters dividing four small panels in which the faces look penciled with a softness.
There is almost an allusion as Lucy comes to the conclusion that her pig-puppet think there are wolves in the walls in referring to “The Three Little Pigs”. Later there is repetition in which symbolizes “Goldie Locks and The Three Bears”: The mother says there are mice in the walls, the father says there are rats in the walls, the brother says there are bats in the walls.
Later, as the family escapes out of there house, the picture book changes into a horror genre with the calm red colors replaced with dark greens, black, and light purple colors. The ghostly figures of the characters have turned pasty and absent in detail of their faces.
There are also allusions to the animals that were previously mentioned. Lucy creeps up the house “quieter than any mouse,” she slips into the wall “quick as the flick of the wing of a bat.”
As the family attempts to live back in the house the text talks of the shed smelling like fertilizer used for the rhubarb. There is detail in stating what kind of vegetable is planted, and not a very common vegetable a child would be familiar with. Yet, again on this same page the text becomes smaller as Lucy says they must be quiet in creeping into the walls.
It is very silly as the wolves are the ones having a part trying things out as if they are Goldie Locks. Just as in the manner, the roles are changed as the humans are the ones who attacked and it is all over for the wolves.
There is a great deal of surrealism. In just thinking of the father questioning why he is talking to a pig-puppet, the puppet ends the book in saying the family will know soon enough of the elephants in the walls. One could say the pig is the symbol in the book representing the victim in “Three Little Pigs”. Now, the pig just sits idly by waiting what will happen to the family as now they are the victims of the wolves and elephants.
Discussion questions:
What kind of moral can be seen in this book? Is the moral more a laugh at the role wolves play in fairy tales?
What is the reason for adding specifics such as the father turning in his damaged tuba for a sousaphone, or the rhubarb, or elephants of all creatures in the walls. Could this be a dry sense of humor that would be picked up by adults such as the punch line from the pig in the end?
Chelcie Ziegler
Word:626
I have read Neil Gaiman's Coraline, which is a darker intermediate reader book, so I was expecting some sort of darkness and crazy twist to to this story. I was not disappointed. Upon first reading the book I didn't really understand what was supposed to be going on. Wolves coming out of walls, then people scaring wolves by coming out of walls and finally elephants? What is going on? On a surface level the book made absolutely no sense, but I feel that there is an ulterior message hidden behind all the craziness.
ReplyDeleteI believe this story is about a dark secret coming to light. When a family member has some huge secret or problem, it will more than often come out eventually, like alcoholism for example. The wolves in this book are like the problem or secret that arises. It takes over and dominates that person's life and they people all around them often just want to escape and not help that person deal with the problem at hand. They concoct ways of escaping permanently, like living on desert islands or in space. Only one family member decides to go back in the house, decides to face the problem head on. It shows how life will once again be calm and the problem will get resolved, though the task may seem daunting at the time.
I enjoyed the use of panels in the book as well. It helped the conversation along by moving your eye easily from point to point. I also liked that the drawings of the humans were fairly normal, but the wolves were drawn with all sorts of jagged lines to help show the craziness and the seemingly uncontrollable nature of the problem at hand (the physical problem of wolves versus the figurative problem of something like alcoholism).
Questions:
1.Why do you think Gaiman chose to keep repeating the phrase “if the wolves come out of the walls, it's all over,” and what do you think it means?
2.Discuss the use of colors and shadows seen in the book. How do they help drive the story forward?
3.What role does the parallelism (between the wolves coming out of the walls and the humans coming out of the walls) play in the story?
Amanda Willoughby