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It takes a graveyard to raise a child

Nobody Owens (yes, that's his name) becomes orphaned at an early age when an unknown "Jack" murders his entire family.

What's surprising is that Nobody doesn't even notice - the kid is too excited that the house door is open and toddles off for adventure.

He ends up at the local graveyard. The local ghosts see Jack's intentions and decide to grant Nobody the Protection of the Graveyard.

A childless ghost couple adopts the toddler and a vampire becomes his guardian.

Together, the graveyard and its inhabitants, seek to raise the living boy - through love, moral guidance and, of course, the finest education the dead could offer.

"Name the different kinds of people," said Miss Lupescu. "Now."

Bod thought for a moment. "The living," he said. "Er. The dead." He stopped. Then, "... Cats?"

This book spans Nobody's entire childhood with each chapter as a vignette, covering the biggest adventure that happened that year.

One year he's meeting new human friends, the next going on adventures with a hanged witch or running from very, very hungry ghouls.

Since there is only a snippet of each year's adventure, I became frustrated when the adventure was over but not wrapped-up. (i.e. the Macabray: the dance of the living and the dead, was not ever touched on again but it was by-far one of the most curious happenings in that little graveyard)

Some of the more interesting graveyard happenings (i.e. Silas (the vampire) and Miss Lupesco's adventures) were only spoken of in the vaguest of terms.

Nobody Owens is a child for most of the book and this is told from his perspective...so it makes sense that he would not know about the full adventure. Yet as the reader, I still wanted to know what happened!

Overall, this is definitely one my favorite Gaiman novels! Definitely check it out.


Audiobook Comments
--Narrated by the author: CHECK! Neil Gaiman has an absolutely wonderful reading voice
--This audiobook has a some musical accompaniment (Notably during the Macabray dance) which made listening to it extremely memorable!

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