He is the first author to win the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book. Beginning in , sexual assault accusations against Gaiman by women were published. Neil has two younger sisters, Claire and Lizzy. The Gaimans moved in to the West Sussex town of East Grinstead , where his parents studied Dianetics at the Scientology centre in the town; one of Gaiman's sisters works for the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles. His other sister, Lizzy Calcioli, has said, "Most of our social activities were involved with Scientology or our Jewish family.
It would get very confusing when people would ask my religion as a kid. I'd say, 'I'm a Jewish Scientologist. I would not stand up and beat the drum for the existence of God in this universe. It doesn't really matter to me.
Gaiman was able to read at the age of four. He said, "I was a reader. I loved reading. Reading things gave me pleasure. I was very good at most subjects in school, not because I had any particular aptitude in them, but because normally on the first day of school, they'd hand out schoolbooks, and I'd read themβwhich would mean that I'd know what was coming up because I'd read it.
Another work that made a particular impression was J. Tolkien 's The Lord of the Rings , which he got from his school library. Although they only had the first two of the novel's three volumes, Gaiman consistently checked them out and read them. He later won the school English prize and the school reading prize, enabling him to finally acquire the third volume. Lewis 's The Chronicles of Narnia. He later recalled that "I admired his use of parenthetical statements to the reader, where he would just talk to you I'd think, 'Oh, my gosh, that is so cool!
I want to do that! When I become an author, I want to be able to do things in parentheses. When Gaiman won the Medal himself, he said "it had to be the most important literary award there ever was" [ 16 ] and "if you can make yourself aged seven happy, you're really doing well β it's like writing a letter to yourself aged seven.
