The Graveyard Book
2008
- fiction
- cemeteries
- supernatural
- dead
- orphans
- juvenile fiction
- nyt:paperback_books=2011-06-11
- death
- family
- alternative family
The story
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? 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.
What it’s like
Mist over old headstones, moonlight on yew and lichen, and a churchyard that feels both sheltered and haunted. The prose is episodic and wry, with a storyteller's cadence and a dry, gentle humour that keeps the gothic atmosphere from tipping into dread. Chapters unspool at an unhurried pace, each one a self-contained vignette of rituals, lessons and nocturnal rambles among the stones, with the living world glimpsed at the edges. The register is tender and quietly funny, with real loneliness underneath, as a solitary child learns what belonging means among the unusual families who raise him. Violence exists but stays brief and largely offstage, with occasional spikes of menace and fear when a hunter stalks the boundary of the graveyard; there is no gore and nothing sexual. It suits a rainy weekend, a bedtime read aloud, or a comfort re-read for people who love old English folklore, found families and fables with a warm heart. It is equally at home with younger readers and adults who enjoy atmospheric, bittersweet storytelling.
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