Review: The Graveyard Book

Product Description - From Amazon.com
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. . . .

I can't count the number of blogs that have featured this book and given it rave reviews. It is considered a graphic novel for kids ages 9-12. There aren't an abundance of pictures and adults are clearly loving it as much as kids might. Although I am not much for fantasy books - Harry Potter aside - but I wanted to see what all the excitement was about. Besides, it's a short book, and I figured even I would be able to read it fairly quickly as it is aimed at younger readers.

I may be some kind of kids 'book prude, but this seemed like kind of dark subject matter for the targeted reader...murder, graveyards, being stalked by mean men...then again, I am from the Ramona Quimby and Choose Your Own Adventure generation. I'm sure kids' reading interests have changed since then.

Prudishness aside, I didn't love this book at all. It wasn't horrible. Bod was a likeable character. The characterization of graveyard inhabitants by their epitaphs was really entertaining. The creativity of the author was well-demonstrated when we were shown how certain everyday knowledge was novel to a boy raised in a graveyard by "people" who had inhabited the world centuries before. But, in general, I didn't have the significant emotional reaction to the book that some reviewers reported, and I have no burning desire to read more Neil Gaiman books in the near future.