Review: The Graveyard Book
“It will take more than just a couple of good hearted souls to raise this child. It will,” said Silas, “take a graveyard.”
I picked this book up on a whim. I was in the mood for something spooky, something quick, and something a little different. The Graveyard Book
Nobody Owens, a living boy, lives in a graveyard. After his family was murdered (quite violently) when he was 18 months old, he managed to escape his house and wound up in a graveyard. The resident ghosts decided that rather than turn him back to the world of the living, where the killer is still searching for Nobody, they will raise him and teach him how to do ghostly things, in addition to reading and writing. As Nobody grows older, he begins to wonder what lies beyond the graveyard, and gets into some trouble as he tries to discover who he really is, and where he really belongs.
This book is weird. It is also beautiful . . . in a weird way. I love that it takes the trope of a child being raised by animals (Gaiman thanks Rudyard Kipling in the Acknowledgements) and twists it into a story of a child being raised by ghosts in a graveyard. But even with that strange setting, it is still simply the story of a precocious child looking for adventure. His adventures just happen to include ghouls, hellhounds, and a probable vampire.
Older kids will love the graveyard setting and the wild adventures Nobody goes on. Adults will appreciate the deeper story at work here: a child who is growing up and wants to leave him, even as he still feels the pull of staying with his family and what he knows. There’s a particular scene that I just love, when Nobody is complaining to a group of ghouls about how unfair his ghost parents are and how they don’t understand him. It’s proof that no parent can win, no matter how different and cool they seem.
The Graveyard Book