The Graveyard Book

From the book:

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a perfectly normal boy. Well, he would be perfectly normal is he didn’t live in a graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the world of the dead.

There are dangers and adventures for Bod in the graveyard: the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer; a gravestone entrance to a desert that leads to the city of the ghouls; friendship with a witch, and so much more.

But it is in the land of the living that real dangers lurks, for it is there that the man Jack lives and he has already killed Bod’s family.

A deliciously dark masterwork by bestselling author Neil Gaiman, with illustrations by award-winning Dave McKean.

My two cents worth:

I first came across Neil Gaiman’s name through the movie Stardust (excellent movie, definitely my all time favourite). Since then I’ve read one or two of his books and have enjoyed them tremendously. The Graveyard Book is no exception. I truly admire Gaiman’s imaginative abilities and his talent for putting it down creatively on paper.

It didn’t hit me that the book was channelling Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book until I read the credits at the end. In Jungle Book the orphan was raised by occupants of the jungle whereas in The Graveyard Book, Nobody Owens or Bod is raised by occupants of the graveyard. It’s a book targeted to children, but adults who love adventures can definitely enjoy the book too.

Growing up in the graveyard gave Bod fascinating adventures among the dead as well as the living and the illustrations by Dave Mckean makes the stories come alive. To quote Patrick Ness’s review title on Gaiman’s latest work published in The Guardian UK “Neil Gaiman’s tales from the crypt are a deathly delight”, that about sums up my thoughts on the book.

Final thoughts: I think The Graveyard Book has great movie potential (yup me thinks it’s that gud) and I reckon Tim Burton can make it happen if he chose it as his next project. Anybody know how I can get this message across to Mr. Burton?