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Growing up with graveyard ghosts

February 15, 2009, Sunday | Print Edition

WITH best-selling books for adults and children - including the new animated movie "Coraline" (reviewed today on B3), Neil Gaiman has carved out a passionate following in the world of fairy tale and fantasy.

His latest novel for children, "The Graveyard Book," has won a top literary honor as well: this year's Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to children's literature. After the prize was announced last month, a debate ensued among teachers, librarians and critics about whether the selection of a popular author was a departure for the Newbery, one of the most prestigious prizes in children's books - and, if so, whether it was a welcome one.

Gaiman himself seemed surprised by the honor. "There are books that are best sellers and books that are winners," he said.

But none of this will matter to readers - for "The Graveyard Book," by turns exciting and witty, sinister and tender, shows Gaiman at the top of his form.

The story opens with a pretty terrifying situation: a man has slaughtered a family in the middle of the night, all but for a toddler who escapes unnoticed, walking out the front door and away from the mayhem. Parents may worry about the violence, but they shouldn't. The action isn't described, and the fourth grade class I read the book to had no problem whatsoever.

Up the hill trots the toddler, to a graveyard full of ghosts who take him in. The tone shifts elegantly from horror to suspense to domesticity, and by the end of the first chapter Gaiman has established the graveyard as the story's center. Within its reassuringly locked gates, the boy finds a safe and cozy place to grow up. (Gaiman has said that "The Jungle Book" was one of his influences.)

Among the dead are teachers, workers, wealthy prigs, romantics, pragmatists and even a few children - a village ready to raise a living child. And they do, ably led by Silas, an enigmatic character who is not really one of them, being not quite dead and not quite living. In this moonlit place, the boy - who is given the name Nobody Owens, or Bod for short - has adventures, makes friends (not all of them dead), and begins to learn about his past and consider his future.

Along the way, he encounters hideous ghouls, a witch, middle school bullies and an otherworldly fraternal order that holds the secret to his family's murder. When he is 12 things change, and the novel's momentum and tension pick up as he learns why he's been in the graveyard all this time and what he needs to do to leave.

While "The Graveyard Book" will entertain people of all ages, it's especially a tale for children. Gaiman's remarkable cemetery is a place that children more than anyone would want to visit.

They would certainly want to look for Silas in his chapel, maybe climb down (if they were as brave as Bod) to the oldest burial chamber, or (if they were as reckless) search for the ghoul gate. Children will appreciate Bod's occasional mistakes and bad manners, and relish his good acts and eventual great ones. The story's language and humor are sophisticated, but Gaiman respects his readers and trusts them to understand.

I read the last of "The Graveyard Book" to my class on a gloomy day. For close to an hour there were the sounds of only rain and story. In this novel of wonder, Neil Gaiman follows in the footsteps of long-ago storytellers, weaving a tale of unforgettable enchantment.

Art and Culture


 

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