Newbery Winner

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I really like books that don't flash the answers right at you. If I were a kid reading this, some of it wouldn't be quite so obvious (Ms. Lupescu, f'rinstance). And while we didn't get beaten over the head with the answers, the clues were obvious to Ms. Smarty-Pants-Me.
Some unfortunate Harry Potter parallels come up (unfortunate in that some know-it-all like me would say there were Harry Potter parallels: 11 year epiphany meaning it is now time to go to school, family killed, prophecy of a child defeating some evil power, blah-blah, yadda-yaddah). All of this is unfortunate because no one sat around saying dismissively, "Oh that Harry Potter story sounds just like The lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones." Now any story with supernatural elements and a kid in it is going to sound like Harry Potter.

But this book is not like Harry Potter. It's a one-off story that takes Bod from toddler to adulthood. He is raised by kindly folk (for the most part) and we learn it takes a whole graveyard to raise a child - ho ho ho. I love the fiddly details, ghosts that are introduced by the inscriptions on their headstones: "Thomes Pennyworth here he lyes in the certainty of the moft glorious refurrection was already waiting." There is much to like about the book even though this isn't really my type of book. I actually burst into tears when I heard on NPR that Gaiman won the Newbery ... even though I'd already heard about it from the ALA feed into Second Life. In fact, I was pretty much crying over all the awards that day. That the audiobook for Terry Pratchett's Nation had won an award really tore me up.

I came to Neil Gaiman through reading Terry Pratchett. They collaborated on a book and I've slowly worked into some of the Gaiman oeuvre. There is a lot of creative work that I think is brilliant, but I don't have to read/watch again (the original "Alfie" comes to mind) and this book falls into that category. If you know a kid who needs a quality book - especially those hard-to-find-reading-material-for creatures, boys - this would be a prime candidate. (Most of them will appreciate the girl in the book being trundled off and her memory erased.) [Suddenly Marf remembers she has a great-neph who loves Goosebumps and is in need of reading material - heh heh!:]

Our library's copy of this book is in the teen area - which comprises Grade 6 and up. I'm not sure about placement of this book. I suppose because everyone is murdered in the first few pages someone decided this should be a teen book, but it's no worse than the Grimm's folktales of fingers being cut off and people rolled in barrels studded with nails. We're more sensitive these days to exposing kids to violence, even though it's offstage (the murders were done before the book starts although the murderer still has one more to kill). I imagine someone picked this up, read the first two pages and tossed it aside saying "Teen book!" and that was that. Pish and tosh, say I.

Also, let me say that I have nothing against serial books or comics and I think kids should have access to plenty of that but an occasional "meaty" book like this is nice to stretch them. Please, please, though don't denigrate trashy reading and force kids to read hard stuff all the time!


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