I’ve had a long absence from this space since I’ve been rather busy, but I was recently able to get a little breathing space and money – spending money, that’s always good to have – and so I bought a book. But it wasn’t just any book: it was a recent paperback reprint of master storyteller Neil Gaiman’s latest book for children, adults, and young adults alike. It was The Graveyard Book, with its 2009 John Newbery Medal on the front cover.

The Newbery Medal is awarded every year by the American Library Association and honors that year’s most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.

But just because it has a Newbery Medal badge doesn’t mean that The Graveyard Book is only for the kiddies in the family. It’s a book for everyone. A teenager will recognize an entirely different take on vampires and werewolves [and mummies and Ifrit too]. Parents will thrill to both the tightly-woven plot and the sly references to childhood rhymes such as Jack Frost, Jack Ketch, and so many more. And the kids will love the quirky, intelligent, and very boyish hero of the tale, Nobody Owens [known to all as “Bod”].

At its initial publication, The Graveyard Book was issued in a handsome slipcase edition with this exclusive artwork cover by Dave McKean.

Nobody “Bod” Owens would be completely normal, an average British boy, if he were not being raised by ghosts in a graveyard. And he’s in residence in the graveyard, its only living soul, because there is a man Jack and he has already killed off all of Bod’s family. For fourteen years Bod walks the thin line between the living and the dead – and then the man Jack returns to finish his task.

The tale of The Graveyard Book flows together in a very nimble, intelligent manner: Gaiman makes breathless leaps of plot and character and the reader has to keep up or get lost in the storyline. The highlights of the story are sketched out in McKean’s smoky drawings, sometimes a rebus, sometimes a simple tableau.

Even as the book takes its inspiration for a coming-of-age story from Rudyard Kipling’s classic The Jungle Book, it also has many smart insights into the contemporary world. A character bemoans being the only one in her class without a mobile phone – but she pledges to use it so that her mother won’t worry about her. A Lady Mayoress looks askance at an Old Town tradition, but is encouraged to keep going by a man with a beard and a turban, even though he doesn’t believe in ghosts.

Every character changes and grows to some extent over the course of the book: a guardian learns how to love; the dead learn to care for those who are living; a girl learns that sometimes imaginary friends are not at all imaginary. And of course, there’s our hero, Bod, who learns that growing up means many things.

At a promotional event, author Neil Gaiman reads from The Graveyard Book.

While he was promoting The Graveyard Book across America, Gaiman set up special events where he was recorded on video, reading from the book to an audience, one chapter at a time. The videos were then posted online, one chapter after another, until at the end of the book tour all of The Graveyard Book was available via streaming video. The videos remain online, and showcase the entirety of the experience of The Graveyard Book – and I recommend them as an adjunct to the book. Far better, though, would be the official audiobook edition, with instrumental music and sound effects.

After buying the book, I thought I would read myself to sleep with it – but I read the whole thing through in one sitting, and at the end of it I found myself crying. It was just that good and I had neither noticed the time go by nor the tears fall.

If you’ve got any aspirations to learning from the world, or if you remember how it was like to be a child wanting to know everything, read The Graveyard Book and delight in Bod’s journey. And have tissues handy.

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Graveyard_Book

http://www.mousecircus.com/videotour.aspx – Archive for the video readings for The Graveyard Book

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/books/27newb.html?_r=1&em

http://www.thegraveyardbook.com/