The Wolves in the Walls
by Neil Gaiman
List Price:
Our Price: $3.81
You Save: $3.18 (45%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $3.74 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Neil GaimanIllustrator: Dave McKean
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-07-26
ISBN: 0380810956
Number of pages: 56
Publisher: HarperCollins
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780380810956
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Wolves in the Walls
Book Review: Wolves Indeed
Summary: 4 Stars
How do we step outside ourselves, to see ourselves as others do? And even more difficult to imagine is how non-human others see us (The philosophical digressions call to me like the Sirens, but I will resist)! However this is done, it's probably more easily accomplished with children than with adults. Neil Gaiman's "The Wolves in the Walls", illustrated by Dave McKean, succeeds in just this way. Gaiman unpacks the proverb, "That spider is more afraid of you than you are of it," in wacky detail, and replaces spiders with wolves. The children - or at least one child, Lucy - hears noises others don't, the adults are deliciously irrational in a fairy tale way, and the wolves behave more like greedy humans. After the first few pages I stopped trying to understand, and just hung on for the ride.
Gaiman draws out the proverb in a meandering way that makes it more than a proverb, and turns it into a real story. As the parents talk their adult talk - with twists - and the kids voice their childish thoughts and fears, and the wolves delight us with their wolfish schemes, the story leaves its parable-like roots, and we lose ourselves in the dark action: We are outside our own house, hiding out in the yard, afraid to get close to the now haunted and occupied house.
The pictures in "The Wolves" are dreamy collages, all of them dark like dreams, where you can't quite make out what's out at the edges. In the dreamtime, Lucy and her family are run out of their house by the wolves in the walls, and while the wolves make themselves at home, Lucy, brother, mother and father hide out in the yard. They discuss what to do. But rather than any plan, desperation draws the family back toward the house, to find out just what is going on. Sneaking in, they find themselves... in the walls.
Like thieves, mom, dad, Lucy and brother proceed as quietly as possible, and like thieves, with some fear. Of course they don't want to be discovered, but neither do they intend to live in the walls. So they listen and peek, to see just exactly who - or what - are their adversaries. What they see is disaster: The wolves have trashed the house, eaten the food, raced up and down the stairs, watched the TV with their animal eyes, played father's tuba with their wolfish lips, played the video games with their greedy paws.
My house. My food. My stairs, TV, tuba, video games. To see ourselves from outside, to see the paraphernalia of our lives in the hands of a stranger, is really quite traumatic. The leap of perspective is almost impossible. In fact, Gaiman surely knows that he's provoking the reader to just such a leap. Again, it may not be such a leap for children, but for adults, it can be harrowing just to contemplate it; most never make the leap. A brief review of modern philosophy (Jean-Paul Sartre and the existentialists especially) will make this little digression seem less fantastic and entirely reasonable.
But it takes being evicted from our "house" by violence; we don't go willingly. The evictors are animals by definition: they threw us out of our own house! They can't possibly know what that house means to us! They can't possibly appreciate it - and its contents - like we do! Animals! So we connive to get back into our own skin, to retake possession of what is ours. Everyone, and everything, to their rightful and original places. Wolves in the walls, indeed!
Summary of The Wolves in the Walls
Lucy hears sneaking, creeping,
crumpling noises
coming from inside
the walls.
She is sure there are
wolves living in
the walls
of her house.
Truth be told, Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's picture book The Wolves in the Walls is terrifying. Sure, the story is fairytale-like and presented in a jaunty, casually nonsensical way, but it is absolutely the stuff of nightmares. Lucy hears wolves hustling, bustling, crinkling, and crackling in the walls of the old house where her family lives, but no one believes her. Her mother says it's mice, her brother says bats, and her father says what everyone seems to say, "If the wolves come out of the walls, it's all over." Lucy remains convinced, as is her beloved pig-puppet, and her worst fears are confirmed when the wolves actually do come out of the walls.
Up to this point, McKean's illustrations are spectacular, sinister collages awash in golden sepia tones evocative of the creepy beauty in The City of Lost Children. The wolves explode into the story in scratchy pen-and-ink, all jaws and eyes. The family flees to the cold, moonlit garden, where they ponder their future. (Her brother suggests, for example, that they escape to outer space where there's "nothing but foozles and squossucks for billions of miles.") Lucy wants to live in her own house...and she wants the pig-puppet she left behind.
Eventually she talks her family into moving back into the once-wolfish walls, where they peek out at the wolves who are watching their television and spilling popcorn on slices of toast and jam, dashing up the stairs, and wearing their clothes. When the family can't stand it anymore, they burst forth from the walls, scaring the wolves, who shout, "And when the people come out of the walls, it's all over!" The wolves flee and everything goes back to normal...until the tidy ending when Lucy hears "a noise that sounded exactly like an elephant trying not to sneeze." Adult fans of this talented pair will revel in the quirky story and its darkly gorgeous, deliciously shadowy trappings, but the young or faint of heart, beware! (Ages 9 and older) --Karin Snelson
Literature Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Literature Books
A Beautiful Feast for a Big King Catby John Archambault, Bill, Jr. Martin
HarperCollins Publishers; Published: 2000-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $19.95
Racso and the Rats of NIMHby Jane Leslie Conly
HarperCollins Publishers; Published: 1986-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $48.99
Goodnight Moonby Margaret Wise Brown
HarperCollins; Published: 1947-09-03; Library Binding; Book
Best price: $84.72
A Fine, Fine Schoolby Sharon Creech
HarperCollins; Published: 2003-12-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.44
Price in other shops:
Listening for Lionsby Gloria Whelan
HarperCollins; Published: 2006-10-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.63
Price in other shops:
Ruby Hollerby Sharon Creech
HarperCollins; Published: 2003-12-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.99
Price in other shops:
The Winnie-the-Poohby A.A. Milne
HarperFestival; Published: 2003-09-23; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
Christmas in the Barnby Margaret Wise Brown
HarperCollins; Published: 2007-10-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.49
Price in other shops:
The Whipping Boyby Sid Fleischman
Harper Collins Publishers; Greenwillow Books; Published: 2003-04-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.99
Price in other shops:
FOX IN SOCKS - A Tongue Twister for Super Childrenby DR SEUSS
Collins & Harvill Press; Published: 1966; Hardcover; Book
Similar Books and other products
Odd and the Frost Giantsby Neil Gaiman
HarperCollins; Published: 2009-11-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.00
Price in other shops:
The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punchby Neil Gaiman
Vertigo / DC Comics; Published: 1995-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.00
Price in other shops:
Crazy Hairby Neil Gaiman
HarperCollins; Published: 2009-05-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $9.38
Price in other shops:
M Is for Magicby Neil Gaiman
HarperCollins; Published: 2008-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.80
Price in other shops:
Blueberry Girlby Neil Gaiman
HarperCollins; Published: 2011-03-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.45
Price in other shops:
Instructionsby Neil Gaiman
HarperCollins; Published: 2010-04-27; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $8.49
Price in other shops:
The Dangerous Alphabetby Neil Gaiman
HarperCollins; Published: 2010-07-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.99
Price in other shops:
The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfishby Neil Gaiman
HarperCollins; Published: 2006-09-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.11
Price in other shops:
Odd and the Frost Giantsby Neil Gaiman
HarperCollins; Published: 2009-11-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.40
Price in other shops:
The Graveyard Bookby Neil Gaiman
Harper Collins Publishers; HarperCollins; Published: 2010-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.98
Price in other shops: