So I Meet You at the Cemetery Gates---Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book--11 Days until Halloween

Keats and Yeats Are On Your Side

I have been a fan of Neil Gaiman's books since I read his short story collection Smoke and Mirrors. But as Halloween approaches nearer by the minute, I wanted to say a little bit about one of his recent works, the children's novel Graveyard Book. It's a book that I enjoyed reading and one that I already have given to several people as gifts. Last year it was the recipient of the prestigious Newbery Medal for best children's literature.

It makes for a creepy Halloween tale. The story is about Nobody Owens, a boy who is brought up by the denizens of a cemetery after his family was murdered when he was an infant. The idea of the story was based upon Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book. In that book, a young boy was raised by jungle animals. In Nobody's case, he is raised by the spirits of the departed. His guardian Silas is able to provide for him in ways the ghosts cannot, as he is a being able to travel between the worlds of the living and the dead. In a lot of ways this book also reminds me of a lot of the boys adventure series' that I read in childhood like Hardy Boys or Robert Louis Stevenson.

Nobody encounters many varied interesting individuals as he grows to adulthood. One of the things that I enjoy about this book is that Nobody gets to meet and have conversations with people from many periods in history, something that almost anyone has wished they could do. And it is ironic that a forbidding and sad place like a graveyard could provide a loving and nurturing environment for a young boy. But the unusual situation works well for him. His adventures in the confines of the cemetery over the years provide him with life lessons, and as he matures, he is increasingly in contact with the world of the living, which at first is a bit of a curiosity to him. After all, ordinary life would seem strange to someone like Nobody. But as he goes beyond the safe confines of his childhood, he becomes ever more visible to the assassin who he evaded as an infant...

Overall, I thought this was a pretty interesting children's book. And with all the ghosts and ghouls, and other fictitious beings inhabiting the pages, I couldn't help but mention this in a Halloween post. The beginning part might be a little hard going for younger children, but it does set the table for the rest of the novel. It is also a good read for grownups. So if you get a chance take a look at the Graveyard Book. Or the terrific Neverwhere, or American Gods, Fragile Things, Anansi Boys, his Sandman series or of course Coraline.