When a little babies family are brutally murdered and he wonders into a graveyard the resident ghosts swear to protect him. What follows is a touching account of a little boy growing up amongst the dead and slowly discovering the evils of the living world.

I really enjoyed this. It was a nice easy read with wonderful illustrations. The story was fast paced and I even had tears in my eyes at the end. ( )

Bod, short for Nobody Owens, escaped his own death when he was just an infant. Though his attacker had not given up Bod has remained safe in the graveyard, whose inhabitants have taken him in. Bod learns what he can through the years from the different ghosts and other folk who reside in the graveyard. Now and then he ventures out into the real world but nothing good usually comes from those escapades. This is the story of him coming into his own, after being under the watchful eye of his Guardian.

This was an enjoyable book. I loved the illustrations, even though some of them looked unfinished I think they went with the text very nicely. This wasn't a flowing novel really, each chapter was like a different clip from Bod's life. The chapters progressed in order and Bod was a little older in each one until the end. It was interesting to read about Bod in the real world and how he reacted and how people reacted to him, because he was a little different than they were. The relationships that Bod made were interesting, some of them good, some of them bad, most of them weird. The writing was spot on for being a book about a graveyard filled with dead people from decades ago in England. I don't have any bad things to say about this book. It's Neil Gaiman, it was a good story and that is pretty much all. I liked it. Read it. You have the time, what are you reading right now? LAME, read this instead.

First Line:
"There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife."

Favorite Line:
"A voice by his ear said, ' Say you'll miss me, you lumpkin.'" ( )

A young boy grows up in a graveyard, surrounded by spirits and ghouls.

I love me some good children's lit, and I love me some Neil Gaiman even more. Put the two together, and I'm a happy girl indeed.

THE GRAVEYARD BOOK is a creepier take on THE JUNGLE BOOK, but you don't need to have read Kipling's classic to enjoy Gaiman's version. It's a wonderful little book that reads like a collection of interconnected short stories. Bod ages at least a year between chapters, and one - "The Witch's Headstone" - was in fact published as a short story a couple of years before the novel was released. His adventures are episodic, but there's a definite sense of growth and change running beneath the narrative. Gaiman shows us how Bod matures as the story unfolds, and we see how his potential for change sometimes puts him at odds with his ghostly friends. There's a lot of flashy surface stuff here, but there's also a deeper thread that parents and educators are bound to appreciate.

Be aware, though, that it is a darker story. Gaiman writes horror, and he doesn't pull many punches even when his books are for younger readers. The book begins with a murder, and many of the ghosts died unpleasant deaths. Bod's adventures are scary as well as fun. Religious families may also take issue with the fact that the graveyard seems to be the final destination for most folks.

I'd certainly recommend this, though. It's an entertaining read with a lot of heart, and the more I think about it, the more I like it. I'd love to read more about Bod, but I don't imagine there'll ever be a sequel to this. I suspect that the anticipatory feeling the reader gets as she finishes may be part of the point.

(A slightly different version of this review originally appeared on my blog, Stella Matutina). ( )

Wonderful, beautiful, hilarious. Almost makes the Harry Potter series look clunky and contrived in comparison. ( )

After his family has been killed and the killer has failed to find the baby, Nobody Owens is granted refuge in a old graveyard which has been turned into a nature preserve. As he is raised by the Owens and helped along by a host of other spirits, a witch, Silas, and a Hell Hound/Russian tutor, Nobody grows up.
There was humor and cleverness throughout this book, although it was a pretty dark story about trying to protect a boy from a power-hungry group of Jacks who were determined to kill him. ( )