Growing up among the living and dead
Lynette Olson, Special to the Gazette
Friday, February 20, 2009
“The Graveyard Book” by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Dave McKean, HarperCollins, 2008, $17.99.
By Lynette Olson
Special to The Gazette
“There was a hand in the darkness and it held a knife.”
So begins Neil Gaiman’s “The Graveyard Book,” winner of the 2009 Newbery Medal. The Newbery Medal is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.
In this case, one needs to define “children” as people over the age of 12 and their parents. This wonderful award-winning story has a creepy, dark side that may be disturbing for our youngest readers.
The main character is Nobody Owens, so named because he “looks like nobody but himself,” (but known as Bod). He grows up in a graveyard, where the ghostly inhabitants adopt him to keep him safe from “the man Jack.” Bod is guided through childhood by the kindly Mr. and Mrs. Owens and the mysterious Silas. (As Bod soon learns, there are more kinds of people than just the living and the dead, and Silas falls outside those categories.)
Bod’s extended graveyard family includes a cast of characters from different historical periods that includes ancient Roman Caius Pompeius, an opinionated young witch and a melodramatic poet. His ghostly neighbors grant him “the Freedom of the Graveyard” — which gives Bod some of the privileges and powers of the dead. He learns the knack of fading and haunting to escape detection and frighten adversaries; he can dreamwalk but still needs to eat and breathe.
Growing up in this strange place brings about many adventures for Bod, 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 showdown with the man Jack, who has never stopped hunting him.
This unconventional ghost story is also a coming-of-age-novel. It has suspense as well as humor. It has action in its plot. The ending (which is also a beginning) is an unexpected tearjerker.
Its message is that, however much fun it is to learn ghostly skills such as “fading,” being alive is better: “That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything.”
One is able to watch the master storyteller himself, Neil Gaiman, read The Graveyard Book in its entirety at the website http://www.mousecircus.com/videotour.aspx. and find more about the author at http://www.neilgaiman.com/
• On the Shelf is written by Emporia Public Library staff and volunteers.