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Book Reviewed by:Winner of the 2009 Newbery Medal and the 2009 Hugo Award. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, The Graveyard Book is the story of Bod, a boy who lives in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts. There are dangers aplenty in the graveyard, but if he ever leaves it he must face Jack - the man who killed his family.
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 Jack—who 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.
Winner of the 2009 Newbery Medal and the 2009 Hugo Award.
John Newbery Medal
2009
Hugo Awards
2009
In all – despite brief bouts with rather grisly evildoers – this is a most satisfying tale suitable for children ten and older. Gaiman's lyrical prose not only mitigates the book's more unpleasant occurrences it elevates the stature of its warmest and most endearing characters. And his crisp dialogue speaks to the kind of hipness that pre-teens most enjoy...continued
Full Review
(627 words)
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(Reviewed by Donna Chavez).
Luckily for young Bod he happened upon an abandoned graveyard that was
haunted by benign, some would even say friendly, ghosts. Caspers, one and all.
Apparently, not all cemeteries are so hospitable.
The Haunted America Tours website chronicles the ten most haunted cemeteries in the United States. Topping the list is the St. Louis Cemetery #1 in New Orleans, Louisiana where forever resides the angry ghost of 19th Century Voodoo Priestess
Marie Laveau. Laveau's life story is as rife with voodoo lore and legend as is her death and subsequent ghostly incarnations. But several websites nonetheless feature photos purportedly taken of herghostly apparition in and around her above-ground tomb.
Other haunted cemeteries on this top ten list...
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Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim
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Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife
It takes a graveyard to raise a child. My favorite thing about this book was watching Bod grow up in his fine crumbly graveyard with his dead and living friends. The Graveyard Book is another surprising and terrific book from Neil Gaiman.
