The Graveyard Book

Customer Reviews

• 4 out of 5
  
  
  by Elizabeth from New York, NY | Jul 1, 2008
  

  I’ve noticed that there’s been an increased interest in the macabre in children’s literature lately. Sometimes when I’ve had a glass or two of wine and I’m in a contemplative mood I try weaving together a postulation that ties the current love of violent movies into this rise in children’s literary darkness. Is the violence of the world today trickling down into our entertainment? Hogwash and poppycock and other words of scoff and denial, says sober I. But I’ve certainly seen a distinct rise in the Gothic and otherworldly over the last few years, and one wonders if it’s because kids want more of that kind of stuff or publishers are merely getting less squeamish. All that aside, generally I’ll read a May Bird book or an Everlost title and they’ll be fun examinations of the hereafter, but not the kind of things that touch my heart. Great writing doesn’t have to transcend its genre. It just has to be emotionally honest with the reader. And The Graveyard Book is one of the most emotionally honest books I’ve yet to have read this year. Smart and focused, touching and wry, it takes the story of a boy raised by ghosts and extends it beyond the restrictive borders of the setting. Great stuff.
  
  It starts with three murders. There were supposed to be four. The man Jack was one of the best, maybe THE best, and how hard is it to kill a toddler anyway? But on that particular night the little boy went for a midnight toddle out the front door while the murderer was busy and straight into the nearby graveyard. Saved and protected by the denizens of that particular abode (the ghosts and the far more corporeal if mysterious Silas), the little boy is called Bod, short for Nobody because no one knows his name. As he grows older, Bod learns the secrets of the graveyard, though he has to be careful. The man (or is it “men”?) who killed his family could come back for him. Best to stay quiet and out of sight. Yet as Bod grows older it becomes clear that hiding may not be the best way to confront his enemies. And what’s more, Bod must come to grips with what it means to grow up.
  
  Can I level with you? You know Coraline? Mr. Gaiman’s previous foray into middle grade children’s literature. Come close now, I don’t want to speak too loudly. Uh... I didn’t much care for it. WAIT! Come back, come back, I didn’t mean it! Well, maybe I did a tad. It was a nice book. A sufficient story. But it was very much (new category alert) an adult-author-to-children’s-author-first-timer-title. Gaiman appeared to be finding his sealegs with Coraline. He took the old Alice in Wonderland trope which adult authors naturally gravitate to on their first tries (see: Un Lun Dun, Summerland, The King in the Window, etc.). Throw in some rats, bees, and buttons, and voila! Instant success. But Coraline for all its readability and charm didn’t get me here [thumps chest:]. I didn’t feel emotionally close to the material. Now why it should be that I’d feel closer emotionally to a book filled with a plethora of ghosts, ghouls, night-gaunts, and Hounds of God, I can only chalk up to The Graveyard Book's strong vision.
  
  My husband likes to say that the whole reason Buffy the Vampire Slayer worked as a television show was that it was a natural metaphor for the high school (and eventually college) experience. Likewise, The Graveyard Book has this strong,strange, wonderful metaphor about kids growing up, learning about the wider world, and exploring beyond the safe boundaries of their homes. There's so much you can read into this book. I mean, aren’t all adults just ghosts to kids anyway? Those funny talking people whose time has passed but that may provide some shelter and wisdom against the wider, crueler world. Plus Mr. Gaiman also includes characters in Bod's world that kids will wish they had in their own. Silas, a man who may be a vampire (though the word is never said) is every child's fantasy; A mysterious/magical guardian/friend who will tell you the truth when your parents will not.
  
  One thing I particularly liked about the book was the fact that Bod makes quite a few careless or thoughtless mistakes and yet you don’t feel particularly inclined to throttle him because of them. Too often in a work of fiction a person isn’t properly put into the head of their protagonist. So when that character walks off and does something stupid there’s the sense (sometimes faint, sometimes not) that they deserved it and you’re not going to stick around and read about somebody that dumb, are you? But even when Bod is at his most intolerable, his most childishly selfish and single-minded, you can understand and sympathize with him. Bod is no brat, a fact that implies right there that he is someone worth rooting for. We see our own young selves in Bod, and we root for him as a result. And as Bod reaches each stage in his growth, he encounters experiences and personalities that help him to reach maturity. That’s a lot to put on the plate of a l’il ole fantasy novel, particularly one that’s appropriate for younger kids.
  
  And it is appropriate too. Don’t let the fact that the first sentence in the book (“There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife”) put you off. The murder of Bod’s family is swift, immediate, and off-screen. What remains is just a great fantasy novel that has the potential to appeal to both boy and girl readers. Kid wants a ghost story? Check. Kid wants a fantasy novel set in another world appropriate for Harry Potter fans? Check. Kid wants a “good book”. That’s my favorite request. When the eleven-year-old comes up to my desk and begs for “a good book” I can just show them the cover and the title of this puppy and feel zero guilt when their little eyes light up. A good book it is.
  
  I guess that if I have any objections at all to the title it has something to do with the villains. They’re a bit sketchy, which I suppose is the point, but we live in an era where children’s fantasy novels spend oodles of time defining their antagonists’ motivations and histories. Gaiman’s more interested in his hero, which is natural, but the villains’ raison d’être is just a bit too vague for the average reader. Honestly, if it weren’t for the fact that Bod’s family is slaughtered at the start of this tale you wouldn’t necessarily know whether or not to believe that these people are as nasty as we've been told.
  
  That said the book’s a peach. I once heard someone postulate that maybe Neil Gaiman wrote it just so that he could play with the sentence “It takes a graveyard to raise a child.” Unlikely. Fun, but unlikely. I mean, he does make a casual allusion that isn’t far off from that phrase, but he never goes whole hog. This book doesn’t feel like it was written to back up a joke. It feels like a book written by a parent with children growing up and moving out. It’s a title that tips its hat to kids making their way in the world, their pasts behind them, their futures unknown. This is not yet another silly little fantasy novel, but something with weight and depth. The fact that it just happens to be loads of fun to boot is simply a nice bonus. Highly recommended.
  
  Ages 10 and up.
  

  
  
   89 people found this review helpful
  
  

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• 5 out of 5
  
  
  by Monica from The United States | May 24, 2008
  

  my NY Times review .
  
  
  

  
  
   30 people found this review helpful
  
  

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• 4 out of 5
  
  
  by Valerie from Madison, WI | Aug 8, 2008
  

  This is how it usually goes with me and Neil Gaiman books:
  
  Scene: at the library.
  Picks up Stardust and reads back flap... thinks, "hey, this looks like a great book. What an interesting idea for a story..." When actually reading Stardust: bored.
  
  A couple months later. At the library.
  Picks up Neverwhere... thinks, "hmmm. This looks really interesting, but that's what I thought about Stardust. Well, maybe I'll give him one last chance." When actually reading Neverwhere: stupid last chances!!!
  
  So I was a little hesitant to pick up The Graveyard Book. Again, the idea is interesting - a toddler's family is killed, and he's raised in a graveyard by ghosts - but Gaiman's books have seemed interesting to me before. So it's with gratitude that I say:
  
  Finally. FINALLY! To me, this book (at long last) connected. I loved the characters and the concept, and the actual text seemed to flow and be more engaging than the previous books I'd read. I'm glad I gave Gaiman's books one more last chance after the last last chance. I may even try one more.

  
  
   52 people found this review helpful
  
  

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• 3 out of 5
  
  
  by Ceridwen from Minneapolis, MN | Oct 5, 2008
  

  This is the sweetest story I can think of that begins with the bloody murder of a baby boy's family. The boy is then adopted by the dead and undead denizens of a graveyard, and the stand-alone short stories that make up the novel take place at roughly two year increments throughout his life.
  
  The best of children's stories speak to both the parents and the kids. Sometimes I think about crap like "The Yearling" and other I-had-to-shoot-Old-Yeller-because-it's-somehow-good-for-me stories and I wonder: what kid voluntarily picks this crap up and reads it? For fun? Will his neighbors be quoted, later in his life, after the arraignment, as saying he was always so quiet? Admittedly, I was never a young boy, so I didn't have the bother of having to grow into manhood and all that, but seriously people, is taking a shovel to a fawn the best way to go about that?
  
  I digress. But I do have a point. (Wait for it...) Juvenile lit often has this horror at the center as some kind of inoculation against the rot in the family, the society, the wherever the author puts the blame for children's inevitable loss of innocence and potential.
  
  Gaiman, for all of the ghosts and ghouls and vampires, tells a very gentle tale. The past is worth knowing (ghosts from all eras educate the young man) but not perfect or a lost Eden. The modern world contains dangerous and murderous people, but in some ways the worst acts are perpetrated by our hero in the innocence of youth.
  
  I still haven't work out exactly what I think, but I thoroughly enjoy that I haven't worked it out yet. Thanks Mr. Gaiman!

  
  
   21 people found this review helpful
  
  

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• 4 out of 5
  
  
  by Montambeau from Portland, OR | Nov 19, 2008
  

  Disclaimers:
  This review is mostly aimed at Jackie and RA, as I'm too lazy to fill in the blanks of our conversation on this book thus far.
  
  This review has light spoilers (but not enough to click that box down there) and also won't really interest people who haven't read it, yet.
  
  This review is also not a "review," which people on goodreads have been complaining about, lately. Okay, disclaimers over.
  
  How Jackie and RA are right:
  
  The Danse Macabre chapter was a JOY to read. It added to the theme of the book that explores the laws of interaction between the living and the dead, but it could stand alone as a short story and would be a great read-aloud on Halloween for kids of almost any age.
  
  The characters were unique, well-developed and endearing. Each one felt real to me, and it took only a paragraph or two to do so. Bod's "parents" and Silas and Liza were my favorites.
  
  The ending was exciting and freaky and then sweet without being saccharine. I loooooved the ending. Good job, Neil. I heard that you are a goodreader, so if you're reading this, here is some meaningless back patting (pat, pat).
  
  
  How Jackie and RA are wrong:
  
  RA said that it was like Harry Potter. I know what you're saying, but I didn't think that. I felt the whole time that it was like The Jungle Book, and then I got to his acknowledgments at the end and discovered I was RIGHT! So, maybe RA's not wrong, but I'm right.
  
  Jackie felt like the story for the Jacks and the premise for Bod's presence in the graveyard wasn't cohesive with the majority of the book. I disagree! After the ending (which was AWESOME), I felt like the weaving of the plot was pretty seamless, which is nice in a book that feels like each chapter is a story of its own. The lore of the Jacks and the prophecy about Bod reminded me of Jesus and Herod--perfect for Christmas time!
  
  I loved how, though the majority of the story's setting was a graveyard, the truly terrifying lay outside of it in the real world.
  
  This book has gotten a lot of attention as being too graphic for kids. I don't agree. I do think it is young adult, but I don't think it would be too much for a 5th or 6th grader, as the violence is reflected upon, but never described. I didn't find this book nearly as disturbing as Coraline, which I'll admit freaked the f*** out of me. I hear people say that it didn't hit them that way, to which I reply: o_O
  

  
  
   20 people found this review helpful
  
  

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