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The Graveyard Book: Volume #2

Neil Gaiman (Author), P. Craig Russell (Illustrator), Harper Books (Pub.)

> Review by Carolyn Marcille

As the creator of the iconic Sandman, Neil Gaiman could easily rest his laurels on past success. We are lucky that he continues to branch out into other mediums; this graphic novel is a full circle project, an illustrated version of Gaiman’s best-selling prose book of the same name. Concerning itself with the life of one Nobody Owens, a boy who grows up in a graveyard under the tutelage of a vampire, The Graveyard Book is a small and beautiful meditation on the ups and downs of being different, and learning to make your way in the world with your own particular talents. He is corporeal, but possesses a measure of mystical power and the ability to communicate with ghosts. The reader may be jealous, but Nobody’s nebulous existence chafes at him a bit. While a great deal of coming of age stories deal with the idea that when childhood ends, you must leave magic behind, The Graveyard Book does an excellent job of showing that while it can be intensely beautiful, sometimes childhood is a sad and dangerous place. The art meshes beautifully with the text; Gaiman’s stories often weave a delicate and lovely melancholy that manages to be both humorous and woeful, and The Graveyard Book is no exception.

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