Cannonball Read - Book 59

Remember the Jungle Book? Remember the story of Mowgli, the lost baby who is raised by wolves and a host of other creatures who live in the jungle?

This book is JUST LIKE THAT. Except, instead of a jungle, it's a graveyard.

Here's a synopsis:
Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs neither to 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, the he will come under attack from the man Jack - who has already killed Bod's family...

Neil Gaiman's book is certainly geared toward a younger reader... but a good story's a good story. And this, my friends, is a GREAT story. Gaiman is an incredibly gifted writer, and with the Graveyard Book he's created a fantasy world that's completely believable. It's suspenseful - there's bad people (and non-people) out there, trying to get at Bod. It's funny - Bod, after all, is a little boy, and he gets into little boy mischief (and revenge). It's sad, too - I was surprised to feel tears in my eyes as I wrapped up the last chapter, but they were real tears. I cared about Bod, and about his family, and all the characters in the graveyard.

Rumor has it this is not the last we'll see of Bod, that Gaiman is writing another collection of his stories (much like Kipling did with his second collection of Jungle Book stories). I can't wait.

The Graveyard Book - A