Skip to main content
Like
Create new Glog
previous
next
Email share
55 views | 0 likes | 0 reposts
Since reading Coraline and enjoying Neil Gaimans work we decided that it would be interesting to see something different from him that he created with Dave McKean.
Dave McKean is an English illustrator, photographer, comic book artist and film maker. Dave met Neil Gaiman in 1986 and have been working closely together. Mirrormask was the first feature film that McKean directed.
Neil Gaiman is listed as one of the top ten living post-modern writers, he is a prolific creator of works of pros, poetry, film, journalism, comics, song lyrics and drama. He is known by fans as a Rock star of the literary world.
The cover of the book was the eye catching feature which caught our attention. It features images of real life and fantasy all in one, and seemed fitting and interesting for middle school students.
Why MIRRORMASK?
Mirror mask would be an appropriate for middle school students. It not only is told through the eyes of a girl around the same age as middle school students but it makes a connection to what things may be like in their lives as well.
The girl in the story wants to run away from the circus just as some middle school students have feelings to run away from home or their troubles the book allows for a view into what might change. The book allows middle school students to come to the realization that what they have may not be so bad, fantasy is not always better than reality.
This book includes a fantasy twist to a story of a real girl who the students of middle school age could relate to in a lot of ways. It allows the students to imagine what life be like if they had a mask to hide behind.
Who is it for?
Generally the variations of the different text throughout the novel can be used affectively to keep the young readers engaged in the novel, however there were pages that could become distracting and possibly lead to frustration for a new reader as they may get lost in the words and lose sight of the story.
Gaiman and McKean use a variety of fantasy and real life images through Mirrormask. They include photographs of buildings and people as well as drawings to portray real life images as well as drawings and photographs to portray distorted reality.
Throughout the story there is use of various types of fonts sizes, shapes and arrangements.
Some text is displayed on its own while at other times it was produced over top of images that made it more difficult to comprehend. Another variation we noticed that could be both appealing and distracting was the variation of the color of the text and the background color of the page. By: Mandy Dubyna & Cindy Karpa
