The Graveyard Book (2008)
The Graveyard Book is a 2008 juvenile fiction / fantasy & magic book written by Neil Gaiman.
A toddler wanders out of his home one night and up the hill into an old graveyard, where the resident ghosts take him in. They name him Nobody Owens, Bod for short, and raise him among the headstones under the care of Silas, a guardian who belongs to neither the living nor the dead. Bod grows up learning the graveyard's secrets and its dangers, from an ancient presence called the Sleer to the world beyond the gates, where the man who harmed his family is still searching. Neil Gaiman reworks Kipling's Jungle Book into something tender and haunted.
Quick answers
What is The Graveyard Book about?
A toddler wanders out of his home one night and up the hill into an old graveyard, where the resident ghosts take him in. They name him Nobody Owens, Bod for short, and raise him among the headstones under the care of Silas, a guardian who belongs to neither the living nor the dead. Bod grows up learning the graveyard's secrets and its dangers, from an ancient presence called the Sleer to the world beyond the gates, where the man who harmed his family is still searching. Neil Gaiman reworks Kipling's Jungle Book into something tender and haunted.
When was The Graveyard Book published?
The Graveyard Book was published in 2008.
Who made The Graveyard Book?
The Graveyard Book was written by Neil Gaiman.
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A few thoughts on The Graveyard Book
The obvious next stop is Coraline, Neil Gaiman's other children's nightmare, filmed by Laika into stop-motion that gets the cozy-creepy balance exactly right. ParaNorman follows another kid who talks to the dead through small-town danger. For a full season of that autumnal, story-within-a-story mood, Over the Garden Wall wanders the same border between the living world and somewhere stranger.
Gentle, eerie stories about children raised by the strange and supernatural
Bod grows up among ghosts who name him, feed him and teach him the graveyard's rules, the same tender-strange bond that runs through Coraline's Other Mother, Norman's talking ghosts in ParaNorman, and the witch who raises an abandoned baby with real love in The Girl Who Drank the Moon. Over the Garden Wall and these gothic-tinged comics share that same hushed, half-mourning warmth.
Melancholy, monster-haunted worlds explored by a small, determined hero
Bod's graveyard is its own small, half-dead kingdom to map, and that same pull toward exploring a ruined or otherworldly place runs through Hollow Knight's crumbling insect ruins, the descent at the heart of Made in Abyss, Dororo's demon-haunted feudal countryside, and Elden Ring's shattered, god-emptied Lands Between.