I'm sure some of you have already seen the movie Coraline, based on Neil Gaiman's book of the same name. If you haven't, you need to! It's a beautifully creepy film with an interesting moral dilemma. The Graveyard Book is Gaiman's latest "children's novel," although adults will enjoy it just as much as their younger counterparts. It centers around a young boy named Nobody Owens, or "Bod" for short. Bod's entire family is grisly murdered at the start of the book, when Bod is only a baby. Bod crawls to the graveyard, and its inhabitants become his protectors. He has ghost parents, Mr. and Mrs. Owens, and a mysterious but loving guardian named Silas. Both Bod and the reader are unsure as to which world Silas belongs to - the living or the dead.
The "man named Jack" (think Jack the Ripper, Jack of all Trades, Jack be Nimble) is after Bod, the same man who murdered his family so many years ago. Bod is given some amazing gifts from the graveyards residents in order to protect himself when he leaves to attend school. He can disappear, enter other people's dreams . . . and these gifts will come in handy when the man named Jack returns. It's a delightful and spooky tale, and anyone who ponders what life is like on the other side will enjoy Gaiman's ideas on the subject.
[Photo: www.neilgaiman.com]
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