Fuse 8 n’ Kate: The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman, ill. Dave McKean

I suspected that Kate had never encountered the art of Dave McKean before. What better time to show it to her than when it’s almost Halloween, sez I! Heck, for that matter Kate’s only vaguely aware of Neil Gaiman himself (didn’t know he was British). I try to give her a good dose of nightmare fuel, but somehow we end up talking about what an old wolf melody would sound like and whether Dave McKean has ever drawn a bunny (he has… and it’s weird).
Listen to the whole show here on Soundcloud or download it through iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or your preferred method of podcast selection.

 
Source Notes:
– With a title that clearly references Go, Dog. Go!, here is the magnificent cover for Let’s Have a Dog Party by Mikela Prevost: Coming on March 19th!

– So, as I may have mentioned, there was indeed a virtual reality version of The Wolves in the Walls. Variety Magazine had the scoop, and they even made a trailer for it. Behold!

– Kate was freaked out by Lucy’s face. Imagine if the virtual reality thing had been faithful!

– Were wolves hunted to death in England? According to Mom.Me: “By 1760, the English wolf in the British Isles was completely exterminated.” I am vindicated.
– The wolf with socks on his feet. Kate says she wouldn’t have a tattoo from this book, but I think if she did she might have this one:

– Here’s something interesting. We mention the Queen of Melanesia sequence on the podcast . . .

. . . but here’s the weird thing. In searching for images for this post, I found something from what I believe to be the British edition of the book that was changed for the Americans. This sequence occurs prior to the Queen of Melanesia, but that “evil spirit” thing was removed for the U.S.

– If ever a wolf did an “oompah oompah” on a tuba, this one did.

– This is apparently the picture that will give Kate nightmares:

– So after discussing it with Kate, I had to know if Dave McKean had ever drawn a bunny. And I found two VERY different versions of this. The first comes from his first picture book with Neil Gaiman, I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish:

And, yeah. No idea what this other one is from.
 

 
– The video quality is not the best, but this will give you some sense of the stage production of The Wolves in the Walls that occurred:

-I think I said the lusekofte was Lithuanian. It was, in fact, Norwegian. Sorry, mom!

– What is arguably the only other decent Sesame Street picture book: Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum by Norman Stiles in 1974. He worked on Sesame Street from 1971 to 1995. Apparently he’s still alive today too.

– As I mentioned, this past weekend I interviewed Adam Gidwitz at SLJ’s Summit. It was really great, and if the talk is put on YouTube I’ll be sure to post it at some point. In the meantime his new podcast Grimm Grimmer Grimmest is more than a little delightful.

Filed under: Fuse 8 n' Kate