The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

I just finished reading The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman last week. This book is very good, as you have probably already heard. I mean, it has been awarded several awards and appeared on several best-books lists over the past year. But I am going to post my own review anyway because I think it ties in nicely to a certain upcoming holiday, but also because the author has recently appeared in the news (and LOTS on twitter).

So... The Graveyard Book.

A young child is hunted in the night by a man named Jack. Jack kills the boy's parents and everyone who lived in that house... but the little boy escaped, quite by accident, and wondered over to a nearby graveyard. At that graveyard a few ghosts decide to protect this young baby from the man who is trying kill him. Then they proceed to give the boy another name, Nobody, and they give him the freedom of the graveyard, a power that helps him walk through walls and become invisible to humans. What a power!

Well, Nobody grows up in this graveyard with an old, kindly dead couple for parents and an otherworldly being as a godparent. He only gets to go to school for a short time because it is too dangerous for him to be out in the human world. He is still being hunted by Jack the killer, after all.

And Nobody has to find a way to be free of this killer if he ever wants to live outside of the graveyard. This would be the great rising action of the book.... and I won't tell you what, exactly, happens to Nobody and/or the people of the graveyard. I do want you to read the book, and I am horribly afraid that you won't do that if I tell you too much about it. But this would especially be a good book to read and display for a Halloween theme, as that holiday with ghosts and goblins is fast approaching.

And, for all of you Neil Gaiman fans, Mr. Gaimain has started a twitter-book. You can check out all of the details from Entertainment Weekly, but basically, he has undertaken to write a book using tweets from fans who post to the storyline. That is a pretty gargantuan task, if you ask me, but it should be interesting to read in then end. Or, heck, follow it on twitter as it posts by searching @bbcaa on twitter.com. You are sure to enjoy the experience.