What To Do With a Scary Book

I think that’s the most wonderfully sensible treatment of a book that scares you I’ve ever heard of. – Neil Gaiman, on a reader’s response to his Coraline.

Here’s the message, delivered to author Neil Gaiman through his Tumblr askbox, which prompted the aforementioned response:

I bought my niece Coraline as a gift. When I next saw her, I asked what she thought of it. She got about half-way through, then got so scared she wrapped it up in a blanket and put it in a shoe box. Then put the shobox in an empty toybox, then filled the toybox, locked it, and put it up in the attic. Which was then locked. Just thought I’d share that.

Makes perfect sense to me. I didn’t read The Phantom Tollbooth for years because I thought it was about a scary tollbooth.