The Graveyard Book
A toddler escapes his crib the night a stranger named Jack murders the rest of his family, wanders up the hill to the local graveyard, and is taken in by its ghosts. Given the name Nobody Owens and the Freedom of the Graveyard, which lets him walk through walls and see in the dark, the boy is raised by Mr. and Mrs. Owens and tutored by his mysterious guardian Silas, who is neither living nor dead. As Bod grows up among the headstones he studies history from Romans, gets in trouble with a girl from outside the fence, and learns what he can about the man who killed his family and who is still, patiently, looking for him. Neil Gaiman's 2008 Newbery winner is a warm, Kipling-haunted middle-grade novel in the shape of a twelve-chapter coming of age.
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The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A toddler whose parents and sister are killed in their beds wanders up the hill into an old English graveyard. The ghosts agree to raise him as Nobody Owens, with a guardian called Silas who can pass between worlds. As Bod grows, the killer who took his family keeps looking for him.
Yes. The Graveyard Book won the 2009 Newbery Medal and the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novel, making Neil Gaiman one of the few authors to win both major awards for the same book.
Yes. Neil Gaiman has said The Graveyard Book is loosely modeled on Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, with a child raised by ghosts in a graveyard taking the place of Mowgli raised by jungle animals.
The Graveyard Book was written by Neil Gaiman, published in 2008 by Roca.
The Graveyard Book is 304 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Graveyard Book takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
The Graveyard Book is a standalone novel by Neil Gaiman, not part of a series.
The Graveyard Book is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.