The Graveyard Book Review

Added: (Wed Aug 25 2010)

Pressbox (Press Release) - When the American Library Association awarded Neil Caiman's The Graveyard Book its 2009 John Newbery Medal, it described the story as "a delicious mix of murder, fantasy, humor, and human longing," in which a child "marked for death by an ancient league of assassins escapes into an abandoned graveyard," where he is protected and raised by creatures not of his own ilk.

But enough said about the plot. Because I am a linguist who is especially interested in names, I want to focus on Caiman's skill in creating and using names, which is one of the reasons the book is enjoyable to adults Cartier Replica Watches as well as children. The first thing the 18-month-old boy needs when he arrives in the graveyard is a name. Caius Pompeius, who was buried 100 years after the Romans first came to England, wants to name him Marcus because he looks like Pompeius's Proconsul. Josiah Worthington suggests the name of Stebbins because he looks like his head gardener. Mother Slaughter, whose tombstone is so weathered and covered with lichen that it now reads only LAUGH, thinks the boy should be named Harry because he looks like her nephew. But Mrs. Owens, who has agreed to care for the boy, says firmly, "He looks like nobody." And Silas, who is a kind of leader in the graveyard, concurs, "Then Nobody it is...Nobody Owens" (p. 25).

In everyday use the name is shortened to Bod, sometimes misheard as Boy. Madame Lupescu calls him Niminy, but hers is another story; suffice it to say that her surname is more or less related to that of J.K. Rowling's Remus Lupin. In another Harry Potter similarity, the giant Sleer, which guards the treasure of Frobisher Mausoleum¡ªthe brooch, the goblet, and the knife¡ª is a snake much like Rowling's Slitherin, except that it has three heads as does Rowling's guard dog, Fluffy. Bod's only living friend is a little girl who wanders into the graveyard while her mother sits and reads on a nearby bench. Her colorful name is Scarlett Amber Perkins Breitling Replica Watches and together they meet The Indigo Man, whose "skin was painted (Bod thought) or tattooed (Scarlett thought) with purple designs and patterns" (p. 52).