Growing Up with (Ir)Replaceable Parents: Neil Gaiman’s The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book

• Published in: Bohemica litteraria Vol. 18; no. 2; pp. 83 - 98
• Main Author: Oziewicz, Marek
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Masarykova univerzita nakladatelství 2015; Masaryk University Press
• Subjects: British Literature; Fiction; Philosophy of Mind; Psychology; Social Philosophy; Neil Gaiman; parentchild relationship; desire; vicarious literary experience; The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish; child development; The Graveyard Book; Coraline; identity formation

One of the most popular fantasy authors today, Neil Gaiman has been notorious for representing children’s ambivalent perceptions of parents and creating stories based on a child’s fantasies of replacing parents with better or kinder ones. This essay offers a reading of The Day I Swapped my Dad for T...