The Graveyard Book
I drive my daughter to school about 3 times a week and we spend about an hour in the car. To make the time useful, we listen to podcasts and sometimes audio-books and given that it was early October when I was looking for material, I thought this book would be highly appropriate. I had previously read it 5 or 6 years ago, but figured that at 12, she was finally at the age when she can enjoy it. We had previously enjoyed Ocean at the end of the lane, and she had enjoyed that too, partially because Neil Gaiman is a gifted author and also because he’s a very very good audio book narrator.
This short story is set somewhere in England, and begins with the murder of a family, or most of them. Father, mother, sister all dead by the hands of a person named Jack, and the toddler left for last, somehow escaped to a graveyard. Where he was promptly adopted by the ghostly denizens there.
Ghostly, but for one, who is never explicitly said what he is, but is pretty clear after a while that he’s a vampire. The boy, named Nobody, for “he looks like Nobody but himself!” his adopted mom said while adopting him, and Owens, for his adoptive family then grows up in the graveyard. He is educated by them and when their knowledge runs out, the vampire who is his guardian extends his education further.
In the DC days, DC would have snapped this book up and made it a series, with each chapter being one issue. That’s how I read the book, with each chapter being more or less an adventure, with an overall plot advancement every 2 or 3 side story chapters. These side story involves his explorations of the graveyard, his education of ghouls, and a friendship with a ghostly girl who died with no headstone because they thought she was a witch. The larger story involves why his family had to die, and what the person or group he’s involved with is going to do with the last surviving member.
As such, it was a perfect set of stories for the spooky season and I highly recommend parents listen to this with their kids. The chapters are short enough for 30 minute drives and the narration is sublime.