A Slight Delay

I shouldn’t be surprised that Neil Gaiman’s latest offering, The Graveyard Book, is as good as it is. Many moons ago, when he and Terry Pratchett wrote Good Omens (which I’d also suggest you read), they captured the kids to a “T.” These weren’t a bunch of adults trapped in little bodies, nor were they a bunch of one-dimensional hellions. Nearly twenty years later, Gaiman delivers a book that’s properly “for” kids, though it’d be short-sighted to dismiss it as “just” kiddie lit. Adam Young, meet Nobody (”Bod”) Owens.

Much has been made of the book’s genesis in, and parallels with, Kipling’s Jungle Book, and the English major in me could probably while away the better part of an afternoon finding the parallels between the two. I’ll leave that to the folks over on Amazon, likewise leaving them their complaints that Kipling did it better. So much in literature–whether for adults or kids–cannibalizes so much of what came before that it seems silly sometimes to point out that really, Kipling did Kipling better. There’s satisfaction enough in reading The Graveyard Book on its, and its author’s, own merits. (more…)