The Graveyard Book

In the fairy tales of Neil Gaiman, children often cross the boundaries between this world and supernatural dimensions. This exploration was the magic of his bestselling book Coraline, about a girl who discovers her Other Mother and Father living in a secret apartment inside her house. In his latest fairy tale, The Graveyard Book, Gaiman turns the idea of other worlds inside out, with a hero named Nobody who grows up in a graveyard. For Nobody, crossing the boundary into another dimension means leaving the ghosts behind and joining the living world outside the cemetery gates.

The Graveyard Book opens with the murder of an entire family at the hands of a professional assassin. He has only the baby left to kill when he creeps up to the nursery, knife ready. But the baby, oblivious to the violence, has already escaped his crib and wandered into a neighboring cemetery, where he meets the ghosts whose bones are buried there. The ghosts adopt him, name him Nobody Owens, and grant him the "freedom of the graveyard." With this freedom, he can do everything the ghosts can do: fade, slip through gates and even recognize a Ghoul Gate. As he matures, he begins to hunger for the living world, and eventually, he must confront the danger lurking outside the cemetery: his would-be assassin, who still wants him dead.

If all of this sounds a bit macabre for a children's story, rest assured: Gaiman makes it whimsical, not scary, thanks in part to his ability to find humor and hope in the gravest of situations, and in part to his remarkable talent as a narrator. His voice makes the graveyard sound livelier than any place this side of the cemetery gates.