Hello again dear readers!
So in my YA lit class, we read supernatural fiction. Supernatural fiction isn't anything new to the genre (remember Goosebumps from elementary school anyone?) and can be seen, in my opinion, as an introduction to the horror genre. That isn't to say they are all scary, though.
I read Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book as my selection for the supernatural. I'll be completely honest: I'm not a huge Gaiman fan. I tried to read Stardust but got bored with it a third of the way through. I also tried American Gods and had similar trouble. But The Graveyard Book was something altogether different.
The first time I read it was for Children's Literature last year, so this was my second reading. I enjoyed it completely both times. The Graveyard Book follows young Nobody Owens. Nobody's family is murdered when he is a baby and yet he somehow evades the killer (named Jack) by crawling to the graveyard up the hill. The hosts of the graveyard (ghosts) take him in and raise him as one of their own. His mentor is a vampire named Silas. As Bod (his nickname) grows older, his adventures become more and more wild. By the end of the story, he has to face the killer of his family as a young man.
The writing is well done and the story is great. It is a middle school level book, so it's less intense than some of Gaiman's other works (like the ones I mentioned above that I couldn't get through). The pages are set up in a manner so that there are some illustrations to help guide the story along. There are also places where the page layout lends to the feel of the story, such as a dark background around a chapter opening.
I highly recommend The Graveyard Book. Even if you are like me and struggle with Gaiman's work, I think this one is worth a try.
(Also, here is some fantastic fanart that fans of the book have done. Harper Collins publishes it on their Tumblr page. I am impressed.)
~Meaghan
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