I won't re-hash the plot -- others here have done nice jobs of that. I just want to say that I had a wonderful time with this book and I am not EVEN a kid. This is, however, the kind of book I would have devoured when I WAS a kid -- flashlight under the pillow after I was supposed to be asleep and everything.
Gaiman finds the balance between adult fiction and juvenile fiction. In fact, the copy I read had a gold seal on it where it had won an award for "Young Adult Fiction". It's probably a little too heavy in places for little kids (the beginning which others have discussed, plus the death of a character who was defending Bod) but Gaiman handles them with just the right amount of honesty without belaboring them. Bad things happen sometimes; Gaiman knows it and he knows we - kids and adults - know it too.
On the main, I found the whole story completely engaging and hated to see the last page. The charm of it, of course, is all the interaction between Bod and the family that raises him...who just happen to all be dead. Beyond that, they're pretty much like you and me with a few restrictions on what they can do, but also a few abilities we don't have, all of which are positive or at least benign.
In a way, I think the book could provide some kids (and adults?) with a point of view that might make death a little less fearsome. At no time is death advocated - in fact, it's rejected by the ghosts as a possible solution to a problem Bod's having at one point - but, especially for kids, death can be such a taboo subject that seeing it handled as almost a footnote to the characters' interaction at times might be a nice alternative viewpoint. After all, none of us knows for sure...
I've read almost everything Gaiman's written (my favorite adult fiction of his: American Gods) and I'd LOVE it if he'd write a sequel to The Graveyard Book. I'd like to know what happens to Bod as he grows into adulthood and (hopefully) finds a way to span the worlds of life and death so we can find out about his world outside the graveyard and once again meet the ghostly friends we've made in this book.Buy The Graveyard Book!
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