Art Matters: Because Your Imagination Can Change The World

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Hi! It’s Emma Murawski. I recently finished reading the amazing book Art Matters: Because Your Imagination Can Change The World by Neil Gaiman. 
In Art Matters, Neil Gaiman shares the wonders of appreciating and making art. The book is broken up into four main sections. “Credo,” the first section, describes how to come up with ideas and appreciate their impact on the world. The second section is “Why Our Future Depends On Libraries, Reading and Daydreaming.” That part of the book explains how to use existing resources to expand knowledge and creativity. “Making a Chair” provides warnings and instructions about making a chair and how that task relates to living our lives. The final section, “Make Good Art,” includes specific rules to live by. This last section is the longest and my favorite part of the book.
Overall, I found Art Matters inspirational and engaging. I like that Neil Gaiman, author of Art Matters, Stardust, and Coraline, broke the book up into creative and intriguing sections because it made the book even more fun to read. As I said earlier, I enjoyed the Make Good Art section. It was amazing because Gaiman provides the reader with specific rules to live by that pertain to work, success, doing what you love, and much more. One of my favorite points he makes from that section is that mistakes mean that you are “out there doing something”. He gives the example of a mistake he made a while back in which he was writing an email to someone and meant to spell “Caroline”, but instead accidentally put “Coraline”. He then went along with it because he thought it sort of sounded like a name. 
In the end, I would rate this book a 10 out of 10 because it is an easy read, but has a lot of information in it that is useful and inspirational, but is not too far-fetched to be true. You also don’t have to read the whole book to find the help you need. Just skim through the book and look for the section you have personal doubts or questions about. Gaiman is very insightful and I am sure you will find what you need. I would recommend this book to any artist of any kind, whether it be drawing or writing, this book is for you. Even if you aren’t an artist, I would recommend this book to you because it is inspirational for you to get out there and make some art of your own.

Comments

  1. Tracy LiNovember 8, 2019 at 4:25 PM

    Art Matters: Because Your Opinion can Change the World now sounds like a very interesting and meaningful read after your review. Upon hearing the title, I thought it would be another boring how-to rules book, but now it seems unique and actually useful. You did a great job talking about the pros of the books and what parts you enjoyed. This isn't something I would have picked up on my own, but now I might!

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