Neil Gaiman once again delivers in this delightfully spooky tale of a boy raised in a cemetery.
Buy It Now: On Amazon.com
Description: 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. . . .
Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his New York Times bestselling modern classic Coraline. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, the graveyard book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages. (from amazon.com)
The Fangirl’s Review: A+
This is going to be a short review, unfortunately, as I’ve got to help the boyfriend and his family make mochi for the new year (which ought to be interesting, but that’s another post entirely). If I had to pick two words to describe this book, I’d say deliciously creepy. The first chapter completely creeped me out–ten-year-old me would have been scared to death and loved every second of it. I absolutely love the way Gaiman builds a world out of the old, rambling graveyard, and how Bod’s personality develops out of being raised by ghosts in that environment. Things which scare other, “normal” children are commonplace to Bod, and I love how absolutely ordinary Gaiman’s narrative makes those things. Ghoul-gates? Eh, you just have to know to avoid them. Fading into the shadows? Just takes practice, and even the living can do it.
This is probably one of the best books I read in 2008 (speaking of which, I’d better write up a post about the books I read last year!), and I’d love to do something with this in one of my classes. I’m taking a course on adolescent literature in the spring semester, so maybe I can play with this one.
It’s beautifully macabre, and I’d recommend it to anyone with an appreciation for the creepy.
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LOVED THIS BOOK! Overall I like Gaiman’s children’s/adolescent stuff more than this adult works, and this one just blew me away and made my top 10 for the year. My favorite chapter was “Danse Macabre.” I’m not sure why that one was so appealing to me, but the writing was great and I found the images of the dead and the living dancing together really touching.
I’ve heard a lot about that adolescent lit class you’re taking in the Spring, and I think you’ll dig it!
That chapter was amazing, wasn’t it? I loved the whole book, heh.
I’ve just seen the book list for the class, and it looks really cool. I’m hoping to get a good theoretical background from the class, and I’m super excited about reading Pratchett in class. I just keep leaning more and more toward adolescent lit…