MIsforMagic

Neil Gaiman M is for Magic Illustrations by Teddy Kristiansen Writing imaginative tales for the young is like sending coals to Newcastle. For coals. Contents Introduction The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds Troll Bridge Don’t Ask Jack How to Sell the Ponti Bridge October in the Chair Chivalry The Price How to Talk to Girls at Parties Sunbird The Witch’s Headstone Instructions About the Author Other Books by Neil Gaiman Credits Copyright About the Publisher Introduction W HEN I WAS YOUNG, and it doesn’t really seem that long ago, I loved books of short stories. Short stories could be read from start to finish in the kind of times I had available for reading—morning break, or after-lunch nap, or on trains. They’d set up, they’d roll, and they’d take you to a new world and deliver you safely back to school or back home in half an hour or so. Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ......