The man Jack made a small noise then, a grunt that contained in it both frustration and also satisfaction. He slipped the knife into its sheath in the inside pocket of his long coat, and he stepped out into the street. There was moonlight, and there were streetlights, but the fog stifled everything, muted light and muffled sound and made the night shadowy and treacherous. He looked down the hill toward the light of the closed shops, then up the street, where the last high houses wound up the hill on their way to the darkness of the old graveyard. The man Jack sniffed the air. Then, without hurrying, he began to walk up the hill.
~The Graveyard Book
I've always enjoyed reading Neil Gaiman's dark book Coraline (now a movie) aloud to groups of children and the moment I started his The Graveyard Book I wished for some kids to read it to. It is spooky and scary and a little bit terrifying; and is altogether a delicious page-turner.
Gaiman won the 2009 Newbery Medal for Children's Books for this marvelous story of a boy who is brought up by the dead souls in a graveyard.
See trailers for the book, play games, and learn about Gaiman and his other books at Gaiman's website.
I'm going to look up The Graveyard Book right away. I find the idea of a boy brought up by dead souls very compelling indeed.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read this yet, but I just attended the Children's Book Festival at Southern Mississippi, and heard all about it. It sounds like a bravely creative story for this age group. Something that will hook kids into the joy of reading for a lifetime!
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