Monday, June 29, 2009

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (49/81)


When a baby escapes a murderer intent on killing the entire family, who would have thought it would find safety and security in the local graveyard? Brought up by the resident ghosts, ghouls and spectres, Bod has an eccentric childhood learning about life from the dead. But for Bod there is also the danger of the murderer still looking for him - after all, he is the last remaining member of the family. A stunningly original novel deftly constructed over eight chapters, featuring every second year of Bod's life, from babyhood to adolescence. Will Bod survive to be a man?

Loved, Loved, Loved this book .......... And when I did some reading up on Neil Gaiman I found out that I had actually seen alot of his work .......... He worked on Babylon 5 one of my all time favourite shows ....... Wrote the script for Beowulf, had a hand in Princess Mononoke, wrote Stardust and also the up and coming movie Coraline .......... So I am officially calling myself a Neil Gaiman fan and going to seek out the rest of his books and comics to read ..........

Firstly let me say I loved the cover of this book ....... Not only is it Hardback but it is wonderfully Illustrated ..... It was a complete joy to read it ...... While reading it I did have a kind of Tim Burton image in my head which I loved ...... Neil said that he was inspired by The Jungle Book ( which is one of my favourite books ) So instead of animals raising the child it would be Ghosts !!!

The book is about a boy who's family has been murdered and as a baby is adopted by the people in the local graveyard ...... They protect and guide Bod ( Short for Nobody) ......... The characters are wonderful ..... And I can appreciate all the gravestone humour with having spend alot of my time as a child wandering around graveyards ( Not in a morbid way - just with my family doing family History - I have lost count how many childhood pictures of me are sitting by the gravestones ) So for me I got totally absorbed into this world ....... The characters are great .... And when you have a full graveyard of people you can really go anywhere .......

I am excited to hear that this is going to be made into a movie as well ...... So if you haven't read it yet ........ Go out and get a copy ......

This is a pretty cool site which you can listen to each chapter getting read to you by Neil himself ............. http://www.mousecircus.com/videotour.aspx Enjoy !!!!!!!!!

I rate this book 5 *****

2 comments:

Cindy B said...

I loved this book! It's one of my top reads of the year. And cool cover. Mine looks totally different.

Irish said...

I have to say I agree with ya !!! Loved it :)