I feel like I don’t come across hardcover 200 page children’s books very often. Harry Potter, of course, and probably a whole bunch of others, but they never seem to pass my desk.
The Graveyard Book starts off with probably the most horrific intro I could think of for a children’s story. Bod’s parents are killed whole he’s a baby. He manages to escape his crib and crawl to the nearby graveyard. Jack, the murderer, tracks the baby down, but Bod is saved by the local ghosts and taken in. He’s granted a pair of ghost parents, the Owenses, and a guardian, the enigmatic Silas, a sort of half-living, half-dead gravekeeper.
Bod goes along being raised and learning more about his past. I’ll save any reader the particular details, but it all goes along with quite a bit of humor and artistry. The various personages of the graveyard, all hundreds of years dead and not exactly up on the world, give advice and amusement. Bod learns the powers of the dead, fading and hiding, and explores the ghoul gate. He mets the Sneer, the witch, and a little girl.
I won’t give away the ending. I wish the story had explored Jack a bit more. There was plenty of material to explore and it wraps together all too nicely all too quickly, I thought, but it was a very cool concept and a neat story. The book has pages of art work, black and white drawings that sort of remind me of spartan outlines of the title cards used for the Jeeves and Wooster series.
Currently I’m reading the book Terraforming by Martin Beech. It’s nonfiction research for my own story. After that I’ll be reading The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon.
