On Butterfly Wings

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Bought this for my ten year old grandson, so as I started wrapping it I thought I ought to at least get some idea of whether or not I dared send it to him because I had never heard of the book before.  The first few pages left me wondering - not that it wasn't good, just that it felt a little (okay, a lot) darker than I would have liked.  But I kept reading and by about the fifth page I was totally hooked.  I mailed him the book, but immediately went online and downloaded a copy for myself, and every spare second I've had through Christmas, I've had my nose in it.  Hated coming to the end. 

Gaiman is a little dark - that is the nature of his writing - and this book was no exception.  But the book had a wonderful message about family and love and caring for others woven throughout every page.  It was packed with action and funny characters and endearing characters and scary things and happy things and new inventive concepts.   Loved it start to finish.  Hope my grandson loves it, too.  And his sister and his mother and his father.   I would definitely recommend this delightful chapter book for any child who is old enough to read a chapter book.  And would definitely recommend it for teens and young adults and parents and grandparents, too! 

This story is about a baby who escaped the horrors of his family being murdered in the middle of the night.  He toddles into a neighboring very old graveyard where he is "adopted" at his dead mother's request by an old ghost couple who were never able to have children of their own,  and supported by all the wonderful people who resided as ghosts in that graveyard. I have to admit, it is a wild concept, but Gaiman manages to make it very believable. 



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