The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman

Ghastly, Ghostly, Gruesome, Great!

Who loaned me this book? Robin? Tom-El? Whoever it was, I thank you. The Graveyard Book is the first thing I've read by juvenile fiction writer Neil Gaiman (whose name looks like caiman, a kind of crocodile), but it will not be the last. This book was justifiably given the Newbury medal for excellence in children's literature.

The pen and ink art is gorgeous
and evocative. The art program
adds an amazing amount of
atomsphere.

I found this book in a side pocket of my suitcase when I was unpacking at a Youthbuild gathering in Kentucky. Surrounded by trees on a mountainside near Hazard, I took every chance to be peacefully by myself and, as it turned out, reading. The Youthbuild gathering was terrific, but it was the quiet time that meant the most to me. Hundreds of birds singing, the hum of ceiling fans on a huge screened porch...in this alternative world, I was easily drawn into Gaiman's eerie otherness.

The Graveyard Book is set in--guess where--a graveyard. A toddler whose parents are murdered wanders away through a door left open by the killer and ends up in the graveyard late at night, when the ghosts are out going about their nightly business. The ghosts take the toddler under their protection and decide to raise him as one of their own. (Gaiman says that he modeled this book on Kipling's Jungle Book, in which a child is raised by jungle animals, but I thought most of Harry Potter.)

Gaiman presents the ghostly community straight on...doesn't need to justify it or explain it. He sort of made me wonder why I ever thought ghosts did NOT live perfectly interesting lives at night. Dry (as bones) humor saturates the text, especially when the ghosts are referred to by what is on their tombstones, as in, "He went down the hill at a run, a ten-year-old boy in a hurry, going so fast he almost tripped over Digby Poole (1795-1860, As I Am So Shall You Be), righting himself by effort of will."

The oldest tomb in Bod's cemetery is an ancient
barrow, which figures ominously in the plot.

The toddler, named Nobody Owens, grows up with spectral tutors and protectors. He learns to read by deciphering the tombstones. Some types of ghosts can leave the graveyard, and those bring him food. In fact, there are many kinds of ghosts and otherwise undead creatures looking out for Bod, as he is called, reminiscent of the Harry Potter stories. And some of them are on the lookout for the person/entity who killed Bod's family (Graveyard's Voldemort).

Graveyard stays pretty light, as Bod gets into and out of trouble. The chapters are funny in themselves, and actually charming, a word I don't use too often. Any fourth grader and up will enjoy them just as cool ghost stories.

However, quite subtly and unawares, Bod gathers knowledge that will help him protect himself when the murderer returns. It is subtle because I didn't realize it until the crisis occurred...it was not telegraphed. Bod collects specific knowledge of stories, languages of the dead, and sacred objects like amulets. The story does get a bit grim toward the end, as Bod and the ghosts cope with a group of attackers. The attackers are not treated gently or kindly.

The graveyard gates have kept Bod's enemies
out--but will it keep him in forever?

A major theme in this book is whether Bod will ever get to live outside the safety of the graveyard. Several times he seeks to stay forever, without really understanding what death is. In the end, he chooses to leave. This echoes wonderfully the developmental crises of adolescence (which some of us never get over)--the approach of independence and the avoidance thereof. Somehow, the child must feel both safe and strong to go forth, and must want to explore a wider world. Children thrown out without the sense of safety, strength, and curiosity will fail. The graveyard world is a security blanket; and Bod resists the measures taken to prepare him to leave, such as the education he receives.

I recommend this terrific book. The language is not difficult (except for names). It is imaginative and interesting, fast-paced, at times ecstatic, and utterly accepting of death, which oddly bequeaths the joy in the book.

Graveyards

Since I've been researching family ancestry in the past few months, I feel an amazing affinity for graveyards. They are the holders of record, the names, the dates, the "daughter of," the "loving mother and wife," the "Grand Army of the Republic, 1864." If you can get to the stones before they weather away, they will give up great information, carefully hoarded information. Chuck Wallace and I met in a local graveyard the other day, to let our dogs roam (with poop bags ready, of course). This graveyard is so old that the graves are undecorated, tilted, worn. Still, Chuck took me to his favorite stone--one in which a misspelled word is carefully repaired by the carver. What a crisis it must have been in a time of grief to discover this egregious and disrespectful error! Who was responsible for getting it fixed? Was the stone carver ever after shunned?

Liz I is a primary marker of history for me. Was
an ancestor alive before, during, or after her
reign? Was the ancestor a contemporary of
William Shakespeare?

In genealogy, finding the grave marker is a major discovery. It makes the ancestor physically real, even as it marks his or her passage into physical non-reality. I have followed the lives and deaths of so many ancestors. The simple data says so much--the historical context of the birth and death years: what was happening at that time? Was she born in England during the reign of Elizabeth I? Did he die before or after Columbus arrived in the Americas? Many of my forebears were English Puritans, arriving in America between 1620 and 1650, a time of religious upheaval and persecution in England. Many others migrated to Ohio from the east between 1780 and 1820, probably claiming land grants as payment for service in the American Revolution.

A map of a cemetery

Birth records are evocative. How many children did the women have? How many of the children lived less that five years? Did a woman have children every year? How old was she when she married? How old was her husband? What kind of life was that?

Fortunately (except for those of you bored stiff by this genealogy stuff), graveyards are quite well-documented. People have marked locations and copied off information. We DO know where the bodies are buried! And me? I don't know. Now that cremation is getting more popular, it is likely that my final resting place will be unmarked. I will end up like one of Gaiman's characters, unsanctified, forgotten. The only beauty will be that I will not be around to find out!

Call It Courage, by Armstrong Sperry

Call It Courage, by Armstrong Sperry, continues my run of “boy comes of age” books. Our hero, a Polynesian boy of about 12 years of age, becomes known in his community as a coward. In a culture that lives mere feet above sea level and depends on the sea for food and travel, Mafatu is afraid of water. He does not go out to fish like the other boys his age. He sits on the shore with the (oh horror of horrors) women and girls. Thus he learns net-making, net-mending, how to make tools from bone.

Mafatu’s fear is attributed to a horrific experience he had as a child, in which his mother died. The gods of Mafatu's culture are active and personal; Mafatu hears the sea god calling to him…that he was supposed to die too and the god will make sure it happens. In addition to the gods, Mafatu feels pressured by family ties. His father is a hereditary chief—how will his fraidy-cat son carry on the family tradition of honorable leadership? Mafatu knows that he is a disappointment as well as a joke.

In a scene oddly reminiscent of “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” Mafatu overhears other boys talking about him, calling him a coward, and deciding to exclude him from their “games” (activities).  In response, Mafatu takes off alone in a canoe. He doesn’t care anymore. Let the sea god take him.

What follows is the story of how Mafatu recognizes his own strengths and courage as he struggles to survive first on the open ocean and then on the island upon which he lands. Like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, Mafatu must master hunger, thirst, fire, shelter, safety, and loneliness.  Mafatu has an advantage in the loneliness department. His faithful dog has traveled by his side all the way. Mafatu also tamed an injured albatross, which follows him and occasionally guides him (especially toward home). The two animal associates validate Mafatu early on as a hero. We know that no ordinary boy would have such loyal friends.

Call It Courage is a small book and a quick read. It was awarded the Newbury medal in 1941. The text presents many native words in context gives the flavor of pre-colonial Polynesian life. However, I cannot verify the authenticity of the culture described. Perhaps it is oversimplified or romanticized. It didn’t feel that way. Certainly the land/seascapes were beautifully drawn—the vastness of the ocean, the surf and sand, the description of life on a coral reef. The boiling sun was over-present until a storm raged and I wanted it back. The author’s love of the islands saturates the writing.

Side Bar: Would you or wouldn’t you?

Would I survive such an experience as Mafatu’s? When I imagine myself marooned on an island or trapped on a mountaintop, abandoned in the ocean or in outer space, I have the feeling that I would not be a triumphant survivor. My survival skills mostly involve writing, not foraging. I might be able to figure out a shelter of some kind. (I’ve read enough books to know how it’s done fictitiously.) And I could probably do OK with loneliness. But I would be lousy at making a fire and keeping it going. And I’m lousy at weapons. In other words, I’m pretty much doomed.

I enjoy these would-you/wouldn’t-you questions. Like, if you knew the world would end in one week, would you try to survive? Would you just eat some cyanide? We really can’t know and I suspect that my guesses would be useless. There may be more than the two or three scenarios I imagine. A friend and I who quit smoking around the same time made an agreement that if we found that the world really was going to end, we would be allowed to smoke again—it wouldn’t matter anymore. But, having been smoke-free for many years now, I doubt that I would smoke at all. I wouldn’t meet the end with a butt on my lips. Why? Why not? What difference would it make?

I often wonder, too, if I would be one of those people who evacuates from a hurricane ahead of time or whether I would decide to sit it out. This was an easier question before I had pets. I would want to get the cats and dog to safety even if I wanted to stick around. Again, not much rational thought goes into this decision making process and in the actual event, I have no idea what I would do.

I also ponder questions about what I would do to survive. I’ve already decided that I would never kill another person, but that’s in the abstract. If my loved ones’ lives were threatened, would I kill or let them die? There’s a great Star Trek NexGen episode about this.

Would you or wouldn’t you? I guess we’ll have to wait and see…