The Graveyard Book

Well I finally read this! I'm probably the last person to get to it but better late than never! And since there are so many reviews of this floating around, I thought I'd give Dylan a chance to review this one. He's been fascinated with this blog ever since I started it and really wanted to have a go for himself. He's only eleven and this is the first book review he's ever written and he's really proud to see it online.

This is a story about Bod, a little boy whose family is murdered and who goes to live in a graveyard. The ghosts of the graveyard look after him. Mr and Mistress Owens become his Mum and Dad and Silas becomes his guardian. Bod grows up in the graveyard and learns how to live as a ghost, practising skills such as fading, dreamwalking and the terror. He learns his alphabet from gravestones and makes friends with lots of ghosts.

I really enjoyed this book. My favourite part was when Bod went to school and scared the people who were being nasty to him, even though that meant he had to stop going to school. I didn't like the end of the book because it was sad and I thought Bod would miss all his friends from the graveyard.

My favourite character was Silas, but I don't think we learnt enough about him. I would have liked to know more about him and the Honour Guard. I would recommend this book to anyone, but especially people who like scary stories, such as the Series of Unfortunate Events books by Lemony Snicket.

So there you go. Dylan's perspective on this book. I'm not going to review it because I think everyone's either read this or read numerous reviews of it. This was both mine and his introduction to Neil Gaiman and we both really enjoyed it. I liked the wide ranging scope of the story, covering certain events in Bod's childhood life. I also agree with Dylan that it would be interesting to know more about Silas. There are hints dropped throughout the book that he has had a less than salubrious past, and I think a book about Silas could be written as an adult novel, when a lot more detail could be included.

So we both loved it, we will both be reading more Neil Gaiman in the future, and Dylan's pleased as punch that his review is online! Good stuff all round!