Staff Book and Media Recommendations

The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman

This is considered a children's book (5th - 8th grade), but I like Neil Gaiman so much that I thought I'd give it a whirl, even in large print. I recommend it for kids; I don't think this book would be any more scary than any of R.L. Stine's "Goosebumps" series. It has good tidbits of wisdom for kids, like these: cemeteries can be nature preserves and have a beauty of their own; people in them were just people like you and it is simply impolite and disrespectful to be frightened of them; and although vocabulary and etiquette may change over centuries, you could communicate with someone from long ago and find that you have much in common.

I wanted the author to fill in the sketchy details of some of the subplots. He definitely could have provided a better logic for how the villian locates the hero again, and how his version of the underworld is organized. It could have been at least 50 pages longer without being too much for a youngster to read. On the other hand, maybe he's saving details for a series - maybe this is the first in a series of books about the adventures of Bod (Nobody Owens). I hope so. ~  Abbey Warner

Reviewed March 2010