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Reviewed by:
  • The Graveyard Book
  • April Spisak
Gaiman, Neil; The Graveyard Book; illus. by Dave McKean. HarperCollins, 2008; [368p] Library ed. ISBN 978-0-06-053093-8 $18.89 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-053092-1 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 5–9

Nobody, known as Bod to his friends, has grown up in a graveyard after narrowly escaping the same tragic end as the rest of his family at the hands of a highly skilled murderer. His incorporeal guardians, the residents of the graveyard, who adopted him when he was a toddler, are always concerned that the killer will return to finish the job, and they carefully train Bod in both worldly lessons and graveyard skills such as fading and inspiring fear. By the time he becomes a teenager, Bod has had a fairly rich life: he has made one living friend and innumerable dead ones, he has learned an exceptional range of skills, and he has come to understand the benefits of being alive and the potential the wider world holds for him. Before his adventures out in the world beyond the graveyard can begin, however, a showdown with his parents’ killer is necessary to give Bod both freedom and a better understanding of his own talents. As the novel covers an entire childhood, individual chapters read as snapshot anecdotes, with the protagonist’s life unfolding as intriguing moments pulled out of assumed years of quietly passed time. Bod, endearingly flighty as a child and painfully ill prepared but wildly optimistic as a teen, is an affable and memorable protagonist, surrounded by equally captivating ghosts who represent several hundred years’ worth of burials (a reference to cell phones orients the story as a modern one, but it has a distinctly timeless charm appropriate to a world populated by those not concerned with daily changes). While readers firmly entrenched in the real world may question such issues as sleeping arrangements and eating (both addressed briefly but not lingered upon), most will be so swept up in the romantic tragedy and potential of young Bod’s life that they will not spare a moment questioning how a child could actually live out an entire childhood unnoticed in an active graveyard. It is to Gaiman’s credit that many of his readers will wish their own childhoods had played out in the same location.

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