Imagine the jungle book, but instead of bears and panthers, a young boy is raised by ghosts in a graveyard. This is The Graveyard Book’s core, the story of a toddler who lost his family in a terrible murder, and waddled away from the house just in time to escape the murderer. He is taken in by a family of ghosts and raised to adulthood, experiencing some adventures, and struggling to live among both the living and the dead.
I very much enjoyed the book, I will admit, but I think your comment here is spot on. This is a retelling of The Jungle Book, and maybe not as well. Given it has been 30+ years since I read Kipling's work, I may need to do that again. So while I enjoyed Gaiman's book, I was more than a little surprised to see that it won so many awards. It is a fun read, with the right dash of humor and great pacing, but I do not find it to be very original. It seems to me he left it open for more novels featuring Bod as an adult. I think this could actually be more interesting in that Gaiman should have more time to flesh out the characters and explore new ideas.
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May you be successful in all your projects.
May you be successful in all your projects.
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
- 02/09/2009 11:58:52 PM
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I read it last Spring
- 03/09/2009 02:32:28 PM
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