Cross Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book with Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride, filter the mix through the inimitable mind of Neil Gaiman, and you have The Graveyard Book.
Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy.
He would be completely normal if he didn’t live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.
There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy — an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer.
But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack — who has already killed Bod’s family….
Despite such a macabre premise and setting for a children’s novel, Gaiman makes growing up in a graveyard seem not only plausible, but homey. The crumbling burial ground, so beautifully described, sounds more like a wild English garden than a gloomy resting place for old bones, its resident ghosts a diverse community spanning centuries. Each of the graveyard’s otherworldly inhabitants are colourful individuals with genuine personalities, and reading about their interactions is like overhearing wonderfully strange anecdotes about somebody’s large, tight-knit family. It’s hard to imagine why Bod would ever want to leave this Gothic paradise, especially since his adopted kin have given him the “Freedom of the Graveyard”, which allows the living boy a measure of the dead’s special abilities, like Fading (who hasn’t occasionally wished they could hide by turning invisible?), Dreamwalking, and Phasing through things. Even with its dangerous ghouls and dark, ancient mysteries, the cemetery always feels like a safe haven from the horrors of school and would-be murderers that lurk outside its protective gates.
As Gaiman points out, though, “The boundaries are always there — between the graveyard and the world beyond, between life and death, and the crossing of them.” Upon reaching adulthood, Bod inevitably faces a choice: stay in the graveyard, where things are safe but stagnant, or go out and truly live. It’s a conflict that will resonate with readers approaching a similar crossroads.
For those who’ve read Gaiman’s previous works, part of The Graveyard Book will already be familiar. Chapter 4, “The Witch’s Headstone”, was first published in the 2007 short fiction collection M is for Magic, where it won the 2008 Locus Award for Best Novelette. Recognizable, as well, is The Graveyard Book‘s artist. Dave McKean, a frequent Gaiman collaborator, supplies the deeply creepy illustrations that pop up at random in the text like spooks in a carnival haunted house.
Recommended Reading Level: Young Adult (9-12) for scary situations and strongly implied violence.
Order now at Amazon.com:
The Graveyard Book (Canada)
The Graveyard Book (US)
Online bonus:
The Graveyard Book Video Tour — Watch Gaiman, a gifted storyteller, read the entire novel online. It’s a lovely way to spend a stormy evening.
The Graveyard Book is distributed by HarperCollins Children’s Books, a division of HarperCollinsCanada and HarperCollins Publishers. For more information on the book and its author, visit the official book website at The Graveyard Book, and the Neil Gaiman website and its related website for young readers, Mouse Circus. Neil Gaiman may also be followed on Twitter.