Book Review 2: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean
Published by HarperCollins on September 30, 2008
Genres: MG Paranormal
Pages: 307
My Rating:
Goodreads

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a perfectly normal boy. Well, he would be perfectly normal if he didn't live in a graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the world of the dead.
There are dangers and adventures for Bod in the graveyard: the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer; a gravestone entrance to a desert that leads to the city of ghouls; friendship with a witch, and so much more.
But it is in the land of the living that real danger lurks, for it is there that the man Jack lives and he has already killed Bod's family.
A deliciously dark masterwork by bestselling author Neil Gaiman, with illustrations by award-winning Dave McKean.

Well, when I finished this book I have to say my opinion improved. I still like Hunger Games better though.

The book starts out with the man Jack who has just killed a mother, father, and child, and is looking for the baby of the family to finish the job. Somehow the baby crawls out of his crib, down the road, and into the graveyard. In the graveyard, the local ghosts decide to take care of the baby. And they realize the man Jack is dangerous when he comes by to look for the baby and so direct him away. Since the name of the baby is not known, he is named Nobody Owens. Owens for the ghost couple who become his parents. He grows up in the graveyard. The ghosts teach him for most of his life. There is one person who lives there who is neither ghost, nor alive. His name is Silas and he gets food and other necessities for Nobody, or Bod, as he is called, that the ghosts cannot get, and that Bod is not allowed out of the graveyard to get. When he is young he makes a friend, a young girl whose family believes he is an imaginary friend. This is because they never see him, because the ghosts have taught him to “fade”. They know someone is out to kill him, and so they teach him what they can to protect him. As he gets older, he tries actually going to school, which doesn’t work out so well. Instead of staying out of people’s minds, he sticks up for kids getting picked on, so he starts getting noticed, and soon school is not an option.

In the end, the man Jack is back to search for Bod, and Bod must deal with the situation to save his life, as well as to hopefully end the whole plot on his life. I guess I can see why this won the Newberry award, and I can see it will probably be on the Truman list next year. While I’ve only read 2 full books so far, both have been really good.

I’m now reading Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. I’m in chapter 9, on page 60.