Module 4- The Graveyard Book

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Book Summary:  
Nobody Owens, aka "Bod", finds safety and protection in a cemetery after his family is murdered in their own home.  Bod escapes from his home and from his family's murderer and finds himself in a cemetery, with ghosts willing to raise him as their own and protect him from the murderer who is still wandering outside of the cemetery looking for the one who got away.  It is decided by the inhabitants of the cemetery that Mr. and Mrs. Owens will be caretakers for Bod, then not yet two years old, and that he would have "Freedom of the Graveyard", meaning that he would be able to move within the cemetery as a ghost would.  Since there are items that a baby or child needs that are not within the property of the cemetery, the ghosts ask Silas, who is able to move outside of the cemetery, to become Bod's guardian and he accepts this task.  When Bod is four years old he makes his first friend who is actually alive, Scarlett.  They take an adventure within the graveyard to the cave of a Sleer, a creature who is guarding a treasure that is composed of a knife, a brooch, and a cup.  Their adventure takes so long that Scarlett's mother thinks that something has happened to her and she calls the police for help, and Scarlett only comes back to the graveyard to tell Bod that her and her family are moving to Scotland.  Another live human crosses Bod's path when Silas has to leave town for a while, and he entrusts Bod's care to Miss Lupescu.  After Bod is taken literally into Hell by ghouls, Miss Lupescu rescues Bod, and come to find out there is more to her than Bod ever expected, she is a werewolf.  After many other adventures that include helping a ghost who has an unmarked grave secure a headstone, being locked in the backroom of a pawn shop while the shop keeper calls Jack, the man who murdered Bod's parents and is still searching for Bod, attending the "Danse Macabre" where the living and the dead dance together, Bod enrolls in public school.  Up until this point he has been educated by the ghosts within the graveyard as well as Miss Lupescu.  Bod soon meets up with two bullies at school that make it hard to not draw attention to himself, and he ends up trying to scare them out of their mean behavior, but he ends up getting himself arrested in the process.  Once again Silas is there to save him.  Bod then meets up with Scarlett once again after her mother and her have moved back after her parents have separated.  Scarlett also meets Mr. Frost close to the cemetery and after he offers her a ride home, she introduces him to her mother and he begins getting close to both.  Bod and Scarlett are also getting closer during this time and he ends up telling her all about his family, how they were murdered and that his murderer is still on the loose. Scarlett decides to try to find out more about what happened to Bod's family and soon learns that his family was murdered in the house where Mr. Frost now lives.  She soon enlists his help to find out more information.  Mr.  Frost says that he has more information about Bod's family's murder and asks for her and Bod to come over so he can share the information with Bod.  After arriving they learn that Mr. Frost is actually the one, Jack, who killed his family and is now trying to finish the job and kill Bod.   There are soon four more Jacks in the house who are all part of a brotherhood who are determined to see Bod dead.  Bod and Scarlett escape the house and make it back to the graveyard while being followed by the five Jacks, and they learn that the Jacks want to kill Bod because if he was to live he would end the Jack's brotherhood.  The Jacks are defeated by one falling into a grave, three fall into the ghoul gate into Hell, and Bod meets the last in the Sleer cave, where Scarlett had been hiding.  Bod tricks Jack into saying he is the Sleer's master and the Sleer takes Jack, his life, and ends the brotherhood.  Scarlett is severely shaken by the night's events and Silas brings her home and erases her memories of the night and suggests to her mother that they return to Scotland.  With the danger of the Jacks gone, Bod is able to move about outside of the graveyard and begin life among the living.

APA Reference of Book:  Gaiman, N. (2008). The graveyard book. (1st ed.). New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.

Impressions:  
This book had been recommended to me shortly before I started this course, but I had not had a chance to read it and was excited when I saw it on the reading list so that I could finally read it.  But to be honest I was not sure how much I was going to enjoy the book, and I was a little unsure about the plot.  Now that I have finished the book, I can honestly say that it is one of the best books that I have read in a while, and may actually be one,of the best books that I have ever read.  As soon as I began reading this book, I was immediately drawn in and could not put the book down.  I loved the story line of this book.  Originally I thought that the story would be dark especially since it begins with the murdering of an entire family except an 18 month old toddler who escapes and is raised in a graveyard by ghosts, but it was a great story that was a new story.  This book was not the same old story retold with a few differences that seem to be so popular right now, especially in young adult literature.  I don't think this book has been given near the amount of attention as it should.  There are many readers that I think would enjoy this book, but it seems to be one of the many hidden treasures that are buried on the library shelves.  In fact, if this book hadn't previously been recommended to me by one of my Mom's friends, I don't know that I would have ever read it.  I think many teens and pre-teens would enjoy this book especially with the current interest in books that involve characters or elements of the supernatural.  The characters were very well developed and readers will immediately be interested in what happens to these characters in this story line.

Professional Review:

 When a toddler fortuitously escapes the murder of his family by "the man Jack," he is taken in by the ghostly denizens of a local graveyard, renamed Nobody Owens, and ushered through childhood by the kindly Mr. and Mrs. Owens and the enigmatic Silas. (As "Bod" soon learns, there are more kinds of people than just the living and the dead, and Silas falls outside those categories.) Growing up in this strange setting entails many adventures, from getting kidnapped by ghouls, to procuring a headstone for a shunned young woman who was "drownded and burnded" as a witch, to, most dangerous of all, attending school with other living children -- all of which prepare Bod for a final showdown with the man Jack, who has never stopped hunting him. Lucid, evocative prose ("'Look at him smile!' said Mrs. Owens... and with one insubstantial hand she stroked the child's sparse blond hair") and dark fairytale motifs imbue the story with a dreamlike quality. Warmly rendered by the author, Bod's ghostly extended family is lovably anachronistic; their mundane, old-fashioned quirks add cheerful color to a genuinely creepy backdrop. McKean's occasional pages and spots of art enhance the otherworldly atmosphere with a flowing line, slightly skewed figures, and plenty of deep grays and blacks. Gaiman's assured plotting is as bittersweet as it is action-filled -- the ending, which is also a beginning, is an unexpected tearjerker -- and makes this ghost-story-coming-of-age-novel as readable as it is accomplished.

Gross, C. (2008, November/December). The graveyard book. The Horn Book Magazine, 84(6), 703-705. Retrieved from http://archive.hbook.com/magazine/

Library Uses:
Have a display table set up during the month of October with this book.  I would have the table set up as a graveyard complete with headstones, with the names of the ghost characters out of the book, sticking up out of the "grass" (moss from a crafting store).  I would also have a couple copies of this book, or more if available, standing among the tombstones looking like tombstones themselves.