The Graveyard Book. With illustrations by Dave McKean.

Neil Gaiman.

The Graveyard Book. With illustrations by Dave McKean.

New York:

HarperCollins Publishers,

2008.

This copy of Neil Gaiman’s novel, The Graveyard Book, includes deliberate markings in colored crayons, as well as stickers, pasted-in cuttings from magazines and computer printouts, and pencil flip-book drawings. These alterations to Gaiman’s text may have been part of a class project: the reader has penciled in a numbered list of alterations under the heading “Altered Book” on the front flyleaf. The point of an altered book is not to reflect the content of a text, but rather to modify it to create new meanings. In recent years pedagogical practice has encouraged young readers to alter books as an exercise in creativity.

From the collection of Rare Book School