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The Graveyard Book |  | Author: Neil Gaiman
Creator: Dave Mckean
Publisher: HarperCollins
List Price: $17.99
Buy New: $6.45
as of 11/22/2009 02:49 CST details
You Save: $11.54 (64%)
New (68) Used (41) Collectible (22) from $6.44
Seller: smokymtnbooks
Rating:  327 reviews
Sales Rank: 316
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Later Printing
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.2
MPN: ISBN9780060530921
ISBN: 0060530928
EAN: 9780060530921
ASIN: 0060530928
Publication Date: October 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
In The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman has created a charming allegory of childhood. Although the book opens with a scary scene--a family is stabbed to death by "a man named Jackâ --the story quickly moves into more child-friendly storytelling. The sole survivor of the attack--an 18-month-old baby--escapes his crib and his house, and toddles to a nearby graveyard. Quickly recognizing that the baby is orphaned, the graveyard's ghostly residents adopt him, name him Nobody ("Bod"), and allow him to live in their tomb. Taking inspiration from Kiplingâs The Jungle Book, Gaiman describes how the toddler navigates among the headstones, asking a lot of questions and picking up the tricks of the living and the dead. In serial-like episodes, the story follows Bod's progress as he grows from baby to teen, learning lifeâs lessons amid a cadre of the long-dead, ghouls, witches, intermittent human interlopers. A pallid, nocturnal guardian named Silas ensures that Bod receives food, books, and anything else he might need from the human world. Whenever the boy strays from his usual play among the headstones, he finds new dangers, learns his limitations and strengths, and acquires the skills he needs to survive within the confines of the graveyard and in wider world beyond. (ages 10 and up) -âHeidi Broadhead
Product Description
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 Jackâwho 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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 327
 It Takes A Graveyard ... November 17, 2009
Milly Marie (Dallas, TX)
It starts off with a murder mystery involving a mysterious man and a knife who kills a family all, but one ...
From beginning to end the story completely engulfed me and would not let me go. I followed Bod's adventures as he took me through his home full of its own mysteries of histories: Along the way you'll meet The Hounds of God, Ghouls, A Witch, Go to a dance of sorts, and meet Bod's other friends and family. Bod will also take you to other worlds far below and so much, much more!
You will feel as if your apart of Bods family or a special small circle of friends.
Not only does Bod have a mystery of his own he must discover, but there are many throughout the graveyard which all come together for one big exciting adventure!
As I finished my book my thoughts were not sad that I was actually completing it, but because of the way it ended. I literally did not have a dry eye.
I hate to think that ANYTHING could beat out or knock down my beloved Coraline, but now I am afraid it has with The Graveyard Book.
Not only has it become my favorite Neil Gaiman (and as much as I love his adult works I love his children books even more now!) book it has topped the best book of the year (for me at least)!
So pick up The Graveyard Book and follow Bods many mysterious adventures!
The illustrations are by the amazing Dave McKean. Simple, but lovely and fit the book so perfectly.
 Classic New Gaiman November 12, 2009
Oceanus Gregory
I liked this a lot. It's classic Gaiman, with lots a memorable scenes to it. I don't know that I'll remember it as a novel so much as I'll remember individual stories and characters, but that's cool. More and more with Gaiman, I'm coming to feel the pure power of storytelling in his writing. He writes stories about telling stories, in a way. Highly recommended.
The Graveyard Book November 9, 2009
Terri Watkins
The book came to me brand new and quickly. This is a children's book and even though I am over 50, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The story mostly takes place in a graveyard. I like a little easy paranormal every now and again. It begins with a murder, and if I were reading it out loud to my grandchild, I think I might leave out a word or two from that portion. But, the murder itself is important to the story. It is not scary, but offers a little of everything to keep you interested - suspense, love, family, and the normal lessons to be learned by a boy growing up... in a graveyard.
Raised in a Graveyard... November 8, 2009
Marci Rae (Boston, MA)
Not since Harry Potter, and I don't raise the name of that icon often, have I read a children's book that so thoroughly engrossed me. It's such a cliche' to say that I hated to turn the last page, but I was in tears by the end of the book, partly because it was such a satisfying, completely genuine ending to a creative story, but also because I knew I wouldn't be reading another book as wonderfully, inventively written for a long time. They just don't come along that often. Admittedly inspired by The Jungle Book, where Mowgli is an orphaned baby raised in the jungle by the animals, Neil Gaiman has brillianty invented a story where an orphaned baby toddles his way into a graveyard after his family is murdered and is adopted by the ghostly inhabitants. (This is handled very well, with very few details.) They name him Nobody Owens, Bod for short. When I purchased the book, I had no idea that it would go on to win the 2009 Newbury Award for children's literature, awarded to one children's chapter book per year by the American Library Association. I have not always agreed with their choices, but kudos to the ALA. They got this one perfectly, splendidly correct. It would be a wonderful book for a family to read together. If they can handle Harry Potter...they will welcome getting to know Bod. I miss him already.
 Disappointing November 6, 2009
A. D. MacFarlane (England, UK)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Such a disappointment.
Occasionally there would be details that filled me with delight: the Sleer, the ghoul gate, the fact that Bod finds sleeping in a tomb totally natural, the way he learnt history from ghosts and this was often considered incorrect history when he briefly went to school. And I'll give Gaiman a lot of credit for the ending. He had Bod engineering the bad guys' ends, from various things he'd encountered in earlier years. Bod actively defended the graveyard. It made the story wrap up much tighter than I'd expected -- and that worked for me -- but it didn't prevent the book, overall, from feeling too thin.
Scarlett (a regular girl) says to Bod, after he's disposed of the bad guys:
"You aren't a person. People don't behave like you. You're as bad as he was. You're a monster."
And herein lies my biggest problem with this book: Bod is quite the opposite to Scarlett's accusation. He's too normal.
Bod is raised in a graveyard by ghosts and a probably-a-vampire. The details I mentioned above are wonderful, these little hints that Bod is fundamentally different to other children. But they were just hints, little personality quirks, and my overwhelming impression was of a normal boy who just happened to live in a graveyard. I think part of the problem is the length and format of the book. It's episodic, with little adventures or events being the focus of each chapter, and it's not very long. It doesn't take the time to really delve into what it means for Bod to have his upbringing; it's more about adventure than character-study. And I really wanted the latter.
In terms of his character, well, at least he's more active than Shadow and the Neverwhere guy. He tries to be kind to Liza, he goes after the bully at school, he saves himself at the end. He's curious and kind-hearted, but he's quite... bland. Liza (a ghost witch) is the most interesting character of them all. I loved how she bitterly related what happened her; she really had a voice.
She got a personality transplant later, though, when Bod becomes a teenager and she gets moody because that's what teenaged girls do with teenaged boys, yes?
Gaiman managed to pull out several of my Big Dislikes in fiction towards the end: the bad guys reveal important information to the good guy, a prophecy is involved, and at the very end, Bod loses his magical abilities the graveyard gave him for no particular reason. (Maybe the ghosts intentionally did it, not it automatically happening because he was older, but because they thought he needed to be among live people? If so, I think that could have been brought out a little more. Magic just fading with age is dumb.)
Another annoying episode was where Bod goes to school. He adapted very quickly, despite growing up in a graveyard, and quickly pursues bullies.
Admittedly, the ghosts are pretty much regular people with funny speech patterns and some cultural differences. But that could have been played on more -- making Bod struggle to fit in with 21st C kids, when he plays with kids from throughout the centuries. Even with Silas' modernising influence, I think Bod should have been at a slight cultural disconnect.
Overall: while I enjoyed little aspects of the book, it badly failed on the too-normal character of Bod and decreasingly interesting plot.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 327
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