“The Graveyard Book” is another example in Gaiman’s vast cannon of distinguished works. I’m always impressed by the whimsical and dark writing of Neil Gaiman. Author of such books as Coraline, Stardust, American Gods, and Mirrormask, Gaiman has a zeal and zest for chilling stories with complex characters and novel twists.

“The Graveyard Book” is not your average children’s Newberry award winning novel. This one begins with a man, referred only to as Jack, murdering a man, woman, and their daughter in their home. The killer is about to end the life of the baby boy at the top of stairs, when the child crawls to safety and finds himself in the town’s local graveyard.  Given the name Nobody Owens by the inhabitants of the graveyard, Nobody is raised, protected, and educated by the denizens of the graveyard.  Nobody is given the Freedom of the Graveyard allowing him to talk to ghosts, travel through ghoul-gates, run errands for witches, and have magical powers including Fade, inducing Terror, and Dreamwalk. While the ghosts and guardians of the graveyard raise Nobody as their own, the man called Jack is out there somewhere seeking to finish what he started that night.

Gaiman truly has mastery in creating a narrative landscapes ripe with deep and complex characters. From Silas, Nobody’s Guardian, to Liza Hempstock, the graveyard witch, each person is delicately woven to add a beautiful piece to the puzzle of the overall story. At its heart, “The Graveyard Book”, is a coming-of-age story of a boy learning the intricacies of life through some unconventional tutors. Who better to learn the potentials and hardships of life from than the dead?

During his Newberry acceptance speech for this novel, Gaiman relating the impact that fiction had on his childhood. He said;

“Fiction was an escape from the intolerable, a doorway into impossibly hospitable worlds where things had rules and could be understood; stories had been a way of learning about life without experiencing it, or perhaps of experiencing it as an eighteenth-century poisoner dealt with poisons, taking them in tiny doses, such that the poisoner could cope with ingesting things that would kill someone who was not inured to them. Sometimes fiction is a way of coping with the poison of the world in a way that lets us survive it”

So one of the new projects that I am undertaking is writing a children's book. I have been doing a little bit of research to see what is out there. I want the book to involve gay issues and gender issues in some capacity but not sure how I want it to appear. So I have been examining how other authors tackle queer issues and explain them on a children's level. As I was doing some research I came across this map that highlights complaints that parents have made about books or have made campaigns to get certain books banned. Here is an image of the map that shows which states received complaints from 2007 and 2009. I was largely surprised how many complaints came from the East coast and the Northeast States. I think there is an assumption that the complaints would pop up in the "South" or in the Bible belt states. Well that is certainly not the case.I cannot wait until my book gets banned and I show up on show list entitled "A DANGER TO THE IMPRESSIONABLE YOUTH OF AMERICA". I wonder if there is some sort of awards ceremony like "Most Banned of Banned Books" or "Best Newly Banned Book."