| Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy.
He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.
There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy-an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer.
But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family. . . .
Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his New York Times bestselling modern classic coraline. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, the graveyard book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages.
Annotation:
Neil Gaiman's eagerly awaited middle-grade take on Rudyard Kipling's THE JUNGLE BOOK features Nobody, a boy raised by graveyard inhabitants instead of animals. Having escaped his family's murderer and wandered into a graveyard, Bod finds himself in a family of sorts. Humorous, eerie, filled with strange, intriguing characters, Gaiman's story is gripping, and enchanting. With stunning, graphic-novelesque B&W artwork, this is the 2009 Newbery Medal winner.
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Praise| "Wistful, witty, wise--and creepy. Gaiman's riff on Kipling's Mowgli stories never falters, from the truly spine-tingling opening, in which a toddler accidentally escapes his family's murderer, to the melancholy, life-affirming ending." 08/15/08 "Lucid, evocative prose...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." 11/01/2008 "It is to Gaiman's credit that many of his readers will wish their own childhoods had played out in the same location." 10/01/2008 "THE GRAVEYARD BOOK, by turns exciting and witty, sinister and tender, shows Gaiman at the top of his form....[He] follows in the footsteps of long-ago storytellers, weaving a tale of unforgettable enchantment." - Monica Edinger 02/15/2009 |
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