Neil Gaiman/Chris Riddell 3-Book Box Set: Coraline; The Graveyard Book; Fortunately, the Milk

Illustrations can make or break a book's experience -- good ones will enhance the book's atmosphere, and bad ones will wreck your ability to envision what the author describes.Fortunately, Neil Gaiman has connected with some great illustrators over the years. And one of the illustrators who best works with Gaiman is Chris Riddell, who has illustrated the three books in this collection: the whimsical "Fortunately the Milk," eerie children's horror story "Coraline," and the elegant, gothic "The Graveyard Book" (which won the Newbury Award). All three books are enchanting on their own, and Riddell's illustrations perfectly fit Gaiman's eerie, eccentric writing style."Fortunately the Milk" skews the youngest of the three stories (despite some jokes clearly intended for the grown-ups), and is possibly the most exciting story about buying milk since... ever. It's also the one in which Riddell's illustrations shine the most, since the whimsical, oddball story lends itself well to the charmingly exaggerated black-and-white pictures.In the story, a family has run out of milk. The mother is away at a conference, and the kids are unable to eat their Toastios... and when the dad comes back, he doesn't have milk. Why? The answer is an increasingly convoluted tale of abduction by globby green aliens, the Queen of the Pirates, piranhas, the time-trabeling Professor Steg’s Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier, the barbaric followers of Splod, ponies, vampires, the Galactic Police, and countless other obstacles that threaten to keep him from getting home with the milk."Coraline" follows a girl who has recently moved into a dull new apartment, with parents who ignore her and neighbors who are either insane or boring. It's the sort of relentlessly dull world that any little girl would want to escape from -- until Coraline does. She encounters a formerly bricked-up door that leads into an apartment in another world, which looks eerily like her own. In fact, it's so similar that she has a taloned, button-eyed "other mother" and matching "other father," as well as a chorus of singing, dancing rats and magical toys. But soon she discovers the horrors that lurk in this Other world, and what will happen if she can't defeat the Other Mother.In "The Graveyard Book," Nobody Owens' family was murdered by a mysterious assassin -- but he was spared because he wandered down into the graveyard. The mysterious Silas (the only one who can leave the graveyard) takes charge of the baby, and he is raised by the ghosts who dwell there. In the years that follow, Bod has many terrifying and wondrous adventures -- involving a witch's ghost, the Sleer, ghouls, dancing the Macabray, and his eccentric teacher Miss Lupesceau. But the man who murdered his family is still after Bod, as well as the only human friend he's ever had.The "Neil Gaiman/Chris Riddell 3-Book Box Set" shows off the full range of Gaiman's writing ability -- a wacky, whimsical story about the ultimate tall tale, a delicately poetic urban-gothic, and a cobwebby, skin-crawling horror story. He has the knack for incorporating the whimsical and fantastical (even if it's obviously a lie, like in "Fortunately the Milk") into the ordinary world, and making it totally believable that an ordinary apartment building could lead to a place of eldritch horrors.His wordcraft is absolutely exquisite, whether it's being silly ("How does a volcano know so much about transtemporal meta-science?”) or injecting poetry into horror ("A husk you'll be, a wisp you'll be, and a thing no more than a dream on waking, or a memory of something forgotten"). He also comes up with some truly charming characters, from the erudite volcano god to the sternly paternal vampire Silas, from the sensible Coraline to the earnest Bod. And of course, the time-tripping dad (who looks oddly like Gaiman himself).And Chris Riddell's illustrations are a delicate but definite enhancement to the stories. His black-and-white drawings are mostly lifelike, but slightly exaggerated (giant pirate hats, thuggy-looking faces) with lots of long lanky limbs, trailing cloth and pointed faces. And there are subtle differences in each book, depending on what the theme is -- "Fortunately, The Milk" is sillier-looking (it has a stegosaurus in a lab coat!), while "Graveyard Book" is delicate and haunting.The "Neil Gaiman/Chris Riddell 3-Book Set" is a good exploration of both men's considerable talents. Gaiman's exquisite writing and Riddell's delicate pictures complement each other perfectly, and any bibliophile child will adore these stories.