October is a wonderful time to do something spooky or scary, and we went with "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman. This is not super scary but it is a little spooky and fabulously creative and entertaining. While it's aimed at a younger audience (about 8-11 years old) it is a little bit on the violent/scary side for some of the younger set, so parents should read this first to determine if it's something appropriate for their child.
That said, it was a fantastically written and imaginative tale that kept you thinking and it felt like you were dropped into some well developed world that wasn't quite ours. One thing that was unexpected was that it wasn't so much as a straightforward plot, but each chapter was like a short story about the main character's life. That would be Nobody Owens (who goes by Bod). As a very young child his family is murdered, and he very luckily crawls over to a graveyard where he is adopted and protected by the ghosts who inhabit it.
There is a lot that is unsaid, hinted at, and some very clever allusions, as well as some adventures for Bod as he grows up with his ghostly family. The story is supernatural and real, tying in both history and the present, real and unreal, ghostly and living all in a tale about a boy. This was a fun choice for this month and our group enjoyed discussing the interesting places the story took us.
"It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. If you see what I mean."
Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
No comments:
Post a Comment