The Graveyard Book (Middle-Grade Fiction)

I found Neil Gaiman's CORALINE (which I recommended in a previous post, and which has now been turned into a fantastic movie) spooky.  I found scenes in his latest work for children, The Graveyard Book, terrifying.  It opens with a man walking through a house in the darkness, with a knife in his hand.  He has just killed the mother and the father in the house, and the older daughter.  He's looking for the baby.  That man and his knife return later in the book, still trying to kill that boy.  I read these scenes and thought, This is a middle-grade book?  Really?

With that said, if you can make it through those scenes, the book is terrific.  (It recently won the Newbery.) The baby is taken in by the ghosts of the neighborhood graveyard.  They protect him as he grows older, and they give him powers of the dead (fading, haunting the dreams of the living, that sort of thing).  He has plenty of adventures inside the graveyard, with witches, ghouls, and werewolves, to name a few.  But he faces more danger outside of it.  

Gaiman's writing is more fluid here than it was in CORALINE, and he's just as wonderfully inventive.  I'm glad to have read THE GRAVEYARD BOOK.  I might read it again, to focus on how it might help with my writing.  But I wouldn't recommend it blindly to all kids reading at this level.  I'd consider the potential for nightmares first.       

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Comments

[Mia]

Not sure if you need to worry about nightmares. I liked to be a bit frightened as a kid.

[Julie]

you're probably right. i haven't heard any kids complaining.