Ariel's Grotto

Neil Gaiman, a renowned author of science fiction, fantasy, graphic novels and comics aimed at adults, won the John Newbery Medal for the year’s most outstanding contribution to children’s literature on Monday.

The association, which conferred the medal at its midwinter meeting in Denver, also awarded the Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children to Beth Krommes, who illustrated “The House in the Night,” a book written by Susan Marie Swanson.

Speaking by telephone from Los Angeles, where he had been doing press interviews for the forthcoming film adaptation of his first children’s novel, “Coraline,” Mr. Gaiman said he was stunned by the award, partly because the book had already found a popular audience. “The Graveyard Book,” published by HarperCollins Children’s Books, has spent 15 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list for children’s chapter books.

“I had thought that’s nice, there are books that are best sellers and books that are winners,” Mr. Gaiman said. “Very often, the world of award judges, and I think rightly, use their magical judging powers to try to bring books to the attention of the world that might not have otherwise been noticed.”

The selection of Mr. Gaiman’s book, which has already sold 71,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 percent of retail sales, would seem to reverse a trend of the past few years when critics accused the Newbery committee of selecting books that had a tough time finding an audience among children.

Anita Silvey, author of “100 Best Books for Children,” wrote an article in School Library Journal last fall in which she criticized the Newbery selections as too difficult for most children. Ms. Silvey has described the 2008 winner, “Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices From a Medieval Village” by Laura Amy Schlitz, as a book that most children would find inaccessible. According to Nielsen BookScan, it has sold only 31,000 copies in hardcover.

Rose V. Treviño, chairwoman of the Newbery committee, said the popularity of Mr. Gaiman’s novel had nothing to do with its selection. “We chose the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children,” she said.

Mr. Gaiman, who was born in Britain, said “The Graveyard Book” gestated for nearly two decades. When his son, Michael, now 25, was very young, the family was living in a home in Sussex, England, without a yard, Mr. Gaiman recalled, and so he would take him to a graveyard across the street to ride his tricycle.

“I remember thinking once how incredibly at home he looked there,” Mr. Gaiman said. “I thought you could write something a lot like ‘The Jungle Book’ and set it in a graveyard,” he added.

Mr. Gaiman said he wrote a page or two at the time, but decided he wasn’t yet up to the task as a writer. After repeated tries over the years, he finally sat down and wrote it three years ago.

“You always have this Platonic beautiful ideal of a book in your head, and then you write something which isn’t as good as that,” he said. “The Graveyard Book’ is the first time I’ve had a Platonic ideal of a book and written the thing and looked at the book and said, ‘You know, I think you’re better than the thing I set out to write.’ ”