The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, with illustrations by Dave McKean.

I read this young adult novel in one day -- I couldn't put it down!  I enjoy books that have a slightly quirky, spooky bent -- and Neil Gaiman is a master of that genre.  The Graveyard Book (TGB) won the Newberry Award in 2009, which is awarded annually to "the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children".  Bravo!

To sum it up:  Nobody Owens is a boy who lives in a graveyard, and is being raised by ghosts and a vampire.  (Gaiman never comes straight out and calls him a vampire, but that he "belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.")

That's usually enough to sell people on the story right there.  But if you'd like to know more... Bod, as his friends call him, has mastered as much of the art of being dead as a living person can:  he can fade, he can walk through walls, see in the dark, and instill fear in people.  He explores an ancient burial tomb deep within a hill, journeys to the land of the ghouls, befriends a dead witch and is tutored by a werewolf -- all within the walls of the graveyard.

But Bod wants to see what's out there, to learn about more current things (after all, his ghost teachers have been dead for hundreds of years), and to enjoy the company of other people.  However, when he leaves the safety of the graveyard, he must also deal with the man who murdered his family.

Learn more:

• The (Official) Graveyard Book website at http://www.thegraveyardbook.com/  

• Visit Neil Gaiman's website for children and young adults at http://www.mousecircus.com and hear TGB read aloud by the author.  Play Graveyard Sodoku.  Watch a trailer for TGB using illustrations from the book.  Learn about his other children's books, including my favorites:  Coraline (MUCH better than the movie), and The Wolves in the Walls (a picture book).  

• Bod dances the Danse Macabre with his graveyard friends.  Watch a recital of the "Danse Macabre" by Camille Saint-Saens as performed by the ASU Orchestra.  Find out more about the dance, the music, the poem by Henry Cazalis and the superstition behind it from this educational guide from the Minnesota Orchestra.
  

• Bod learns to read with the help of tombstone epitaphs.  Read some "Funny Stones to Tickle Your Funny Bones" -- real epitaphs found in cemeteries.
  

• Bod befriends the ghost of Liza Hempstock, a witch.  Learn more about witchcraft persecutions before Salem.