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| M Is for Magic | 
 enlarge | Author: Neil Gaiman
Creator: Teddy Kristiansen
Publisher: HarperCollins
Category: Book
List Price: $16.99
Buy New: $6.19
You Save: $10.80 (64%)
New (41) Used (19) Collectible (1) from $5.58
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 139315
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Young Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 1
ISBN: 0061186422
EAN: 9780061186424
ASIN: 0061186422
Publication Date: July 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New - Direct From Distributor - Light Shelf Wear - Remainder Mark
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Product Description
Stories to delight, enchant, and surprise you. Bestselling author and master storyteller Neil Gaiman here presents a breathtaking collection of tales that may chill or amuse readers—but always embrace the unexpected: - A teenage boy who has trouble talking to girls finds himself at a rather unusual party.
- A sinister jack-in-the-box haunts the lives of the children who owned it.
- A boy raised in a graveyard makes a discovery and confronts the much more troubling world of the living.
- A stray cat fights a nightly battle to protect his adopted family from a terrible evil.
These eleven stories illuminate the real and the fantastic, and will be welcomed with great joy by Neil Gaiman's many fans as well as by readers coming to his work for the first time.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 magic time September 23, 2007
44 out of 48 found this review helpful
Neil Gaiman, the author of the novel Stardust (which was made into a great film with Robert De Niro and Claire Danes) and the Sandman stories /graphic novels from DC Comics, is a natural storyteller. He is also a noted children author with a special talent to talk to children and adults with the sense of wonder of a child. He also has a children's audio collection of his picture books.
Now to this current audio collection, these are sort of stories you would hear when you were ten and around a summer campfire. The narrative talent of Gaiman draws the listener in and keeps you in. You don't care if these tales are for children, young adults or adults, he makes all these PG type stories great.
What makes this collection great is good storytelling. Like Ray Bradbury's S is for Space, which he notes in his audio forward, Gaiman uses simple ideas and meshes them into mini horror or thriller tales . . . and keeps you interested!
It is worth your time to get this collection for your family. When you do, get one for the adults and one for the kids
 Disappointing. July 17, 2007
31 out of 39 found this review helpful
I was very disappointed when I bought this book. I thought it would be a new collection of short stories by Gaiman, but it turns out it's just a compilation of select stories from FRAGILE THINGS and SMOKE AND MIRRORS.
Waste of money.
 It's fine, but there's a problem... July 11, 2007
14 out of 19 found this review helpful
M is for Magic is a fine book, and it'd might even be great- except that most of this material was previously published in Fragile Things. So, if you have Fragile Things and liked it, carefully check out M is for Magic before buying it. You may be a big enough fan to want it anyway, or you may want to wait for the softcover.
 M is for Morbid March 16, 2008
8 out of 15 found this review helpful
This small anthology contains 10 short stories and one bad poem. It clearly presents itself as a children's book (for "ages 10 and up" according to the flap), and many of the stories were apparently selected for elements that many superficially associate with Children's Literature, such as child protagonists, a sentient toy, a heroic animal, a mythical creature or some nursery rhyme references.
However, the pretence that this is a Children's Book is a cynical marketing deception. With the possible exception of "The Witch's Headstone", none of the stories here were originally written for children, nor have any been substantially altered for that audience. I did notice that at least one story ("Troll Bridge"), had received some very minor editing to remove some of the more blatant adult language and references (which in no way detracts from the tale anything of value, IMHO), but it remains a highly adult-themed (and disturbing) tale.
But the most inappropriate thing about this book is its promotion of suicidal ideas. The worst offender is "October in the Chair," which starts with a boy running away from home, and ends with his decision to throw away his life in pursuit of the sanctuary of the graveyard. This could be read as a horror story - and I suppose a healthy child would indeed be horrified by it. But it does not read as horror. It reads as a dark fantasy -- an advertisement for child suicide.
Suicidal themes are further explored in "Troll Bridge," which is not quite so bad as "October..." in that it at least suggests that a child might want to wait until he has some experience of life - which mainly means experience of sex - before he ultimately and inevitably decides to throw away his worthless life.
"Witch's Headstone," the last story in the volume, also adds to the theme, but indirectly. It is about young boy who lives in a graveyard under the protection of its apparently-benevolent ghosts. The graveyard appears as a (somewhat bleak) sanctuary, while the living world outside is portrayed as evil and threatening. I do not object to this positive portrayal of a graveyard sanctuary, since there is no indication that our hero got to this juncture via suicide (in fact, he is refered to as the "live boy"). The problem arises because this appears in the same volume as "October...", and the situations are so similar that it almost that it might be a sequel. It seems to resolve the ambiguous ending of "October..." in favor of the idea that the suicidal act at the end of that story was a good idea.
Nonetheless, I might have thought that "...Headstone," viewed strictly on its own (rather than as a follow-up to "October..."), was a tolerable kids' horror fantasy, containing some genuinely imaginative and creepy situations. However, it contains yet another terrible flaw. One character, who the author clearly intends as sympathetic, is the ghost of a witch who, as revenge for her execution, curses an entire village to a painful death. Wait ... sorry - it was not quite the ENTIRE village. "Just those that watched me get burned and drowned," explains this mass-murderess (with a shrug) when our boy hero inquires on this issue. That seems to make it okay in Gaiman's mind. In short not only does Gaiman suggest (in "October...") that our kids ought to kill themselves, but he also suggests (in "... Headstone") that they might want to slaughter half the community on their way out, on the flimsiest of justifications.
Setting aside the volume's unsuitability for kids, and viewing it simply as a slim collection of adult stories, it remains a mixed bag. "The Price," about a mysterious stray cat, is the best story here. Others, such as "Troll Bridge" are memorably horrific and disturbing, though I hesitate to call them good. Still others, such as "The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds" and "How to Sell the Ponti Bridge", are just pointless tales that try too hard to be clever, and fail. Many of the stories (even "The Price") are underdeveloped - Gaiman seems to think that not finishing or adequately developing a story is a good way to create an illusion of depth. Almost all of the stories here can be found in earlier, larger, collections (The best ones are from SMOKE AND MIRRORS, while others are from FRAGILE THINGS). The only advantage to this slim volume is that it spares the reader exposure to some of Gaiman's more degraded dark fantasies.
Still, the stench of moral decay is not absent here, and virtually all the stories display a disturbing indifference to morality. "...Blackbirds" celebrates the principle that one must "look out for number one." When, in "Troll Bridge", the hero offers first his sister, then his girlfriend, to the troll in order to ransom himself, there is never any clear indication that the author feels that he ought to have behaved otherwise. "...Ponti Bridge" celebrates the glorious achievements of a con-man. "Sunbird" seems to celebrate, as though it were merely funny, a happy-go-lucky rascal who casually murders all his friends (for unexplained motives) in the course of obtaining immortality for himself.
"The Price" is the closest thing to an exception. The protagonist is a coward, as always, but the same cannot be said for the mysterious, self-sacrificing Cat who suffers for his sins. It is the only story here that strongly suggests the possibility of Good as well as Evil, and that is why it is my favorite.
 Good book but watch out for repeats June 29, 2007
7 out of 12 found this review helpful
For some reason that I can't figure out, Gaiman decided to include "October in the Chair" and "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" in this book, when both were JUST included in Fragile Things last year. Did he run out of stories so quickly?? I would have liked to see more new stories.
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