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Plot Summary:
The Graveyard Book is the winner of the Newbery Medal, the Carnegie Medal, the Hugo Award for best novel, the Locus Award for Young Adult novel, the American Bookseller Association’s “Best Indie Young Adult Buzz Book,” a Horn Book Honor, and Audio Book of the Year.
Bod is an unusual boy who inhabits an unusual place—he’s the only living resident of a graveyard. Raised from infancy by the ghosts, werewolves, and other cemetery denizens, Bod has learned the antiquated customs of his guardians’ time as well as their ghostly teachings—such as the ability to Fade so mere mortals cannot see him.
Can a boy raised by ghosts face the wonders and terrors of the worlds of both the living and the dead?
What I loved about The Graveyard Book:
The story features Nobody, a young boy who is raised by ghosts. Sounds weird, I know. But, it isn’t, really. It may be a juvenile or YA book, but don’t be spooked. This book vividly speaks to grown-ups, too. Nobody toddles out of his home after an evil person breaks in and kills his family. Fortunately, Nobody finds himself in a nearby graveyard and is “adopted” by the resident spirits. They can see him and he (presumably based on his youth) can see them. Not everyone can.
Gaiman weaves a fantasy tale with the real feelings of friendship, love, family and the struggles and unexpected sorrows of growing up and becoming independent. Read it slowly. There’s a lot of really great stuff in here.
There was a smile dancing on his lips, although it was a wary smile, for the world is a bigger place than a little graveyard on a hill; and there would be dangers in it and mysteries, new friends to make, old friends to rediscover, mistakes to be made and many paths to be walked before he would, finally, return to the graveyard or ride with the Lady on the broad back of her great grey stallion.
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
The Graveyard Book ranks high on many of my adult friends’ lists of favorite books ever. Seriously, … ever.
Novel Adventures to Pair with The Graveyard Book
Well….there’s the obvious choice of a graveyard! The Graveyard Book was the inspiration for my trip to Hood Cemetery in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. It’s one of the oldest in the United States. Fellow Philadelphians and visitors alike will also enjoy a stroll through Laurel Hill cemetery. I pass by it almost everyday and it reminds me so much of the descriptions of the gravestones and monuments in Gaiman’s fictional cemetery. Laurel Hill was not only established as a permanent, non-sectarian burial place for the dead, but also as a scenic, riverside sanctuary for the living. Just the sort of place Nobody might hang out. 🙂
Psst…If you love reading novels and love going on novel adventures, now you can pair the two loves! To get reading suggestions paired with activity ideas delivered to your inbox, be sure to subscribe to The Novel Tourist newsletter. After all, Life Should be as Fun as Fiction!
Post updated: Oct. 2, 2019