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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Sep 2008, 320 pages
Paperback:
Sep 2010, 320 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Donna Chavez
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Winner of the 2009 Newbery Medal and the 2009 Hugo Award. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, The Graveyard Book is the story of Bod, a boy who lives in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts. There are dangers aplenty in the graveyard, but if he ever leaves it he must face Jack - the man who killed his family.
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.
Winner of the 2009 Newbery Medal and the 2009 Hugo Award.
Chapter One
How Nobody Came to the Graveyard
There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.
The knife had a handle of polished black bone, and a blade finer and sharper than any razor. If it sliced you, you might not even know you had been cut, not immediately.
The knife had done almost everything it was brought to that house to do, and both the blade and the handle were wet.
The street door was still open, just a little, where the knife and the man who held it had slipped in, and wisps of nighttime mist slithered and twined into the house through the open door.
The man Jack paused on the landing. With his left hand he pulled a large white handkerchief from the pocket of his black coat, and with it he wiped off the knife and his gloved right hand which had been holding it; then he put the handkerchief away. The hunt was almost over. He had left the woman in her bed, the man on the bedroom floor, the older child in her brightly colored bedroom, surrounded by ...
The John Newbery Medal
2009
In all – despite brief bouts with rather grisly evildoers – this is a most satisfying tale suitable for children ten and older. Gaiman's lyrical prose not only mitigates the book's more unpleasant occurrences it elevates the stature of its warmest and most endearing characters. And his crisp dialogue speaks to the kind of hipness that pre-teens most enjoy...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Donna Chavez).
Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife
It takes a graveyard to raise a child. My favorite thing about this book was watching Bod grow up in his fine crumbly graveyard with his dead and living friends. The Graveyard Book is another surprising and terrific book from Neil Gaiman. Laurell K. Hamilton, author of the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter novels
After finishing The Graveyard Book, I had only one thought - I hope there's more. I want to see more of the adventures of Nobody Owens, and there is no higher praise for a book.Luckily for young Bod he happened upon an abandoned graveyard that was
haunted by benign, some would even say friendly, ghosts. Caspers, one and all.
Apparently, not all cemeteries are so hospitable.
The Haunted America Tours website chronicles the ten most haunted cemeteries in the United States. Topping the list is the St. Louis Cemetery #1 in New Orleans, Louisiana where forever resides the angry ghost of 19th Century Voodoo Priestess
Marie Laveau. Laveau's life story is as rife with voodoo lore and legend as is her death and subsequent ghostly incarnations. But several websites nonetheless feature photos purportedly taken of herghostly apparition in and around her above-ground tomb.
Other haunted cemeteries on this top ten list...
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