The Graveyard Book

In The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, an orphan boy is raised by ghosts in a cemetery, where he learns how to become invisible, haunt people’s dreams, and face his destiny against those who want to kill him.

Published in 2008, this fantasy-adventure novel for middle-grade and young-adult readers became a #1 New York Times best seller. It won the Newbery and Carnegie medals for best children’s book, the first time a work has received both awards. It also garnered a Hugo Award for science fiction or fantasy and received several other honors.

Author Gaiman has published nearly three dozen books for young readers and adults. His works include Neverwhere, American Gods, M Is for Magic, and The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish. He has written and co-written multiple stage plays, and many of his works have been adapted for theatre and film, including the animated feature Coraline. The Graveyard Book is in development as a motion picture.

Illustrated by Dave McKean, the novel’s HarperCollins ebook edition forms the basis for this study guide.

Plot Summary

An assassin named “man Jack” enters a house at night and uses a knife to kill a man, his wife, and their daughter. He searches for the fourth family member, a toddler, but the little boy has wandered off into the night. The boy arrives at a graveyard at the top of a hill, where the ghost of a long-dead woman, Mrs. Owens, greets him. The murdered family’s ghosts show up and beg her to protect the boy from the assassin, who has followed the lad’s scent up to the cemetery. Mrs. Owens and her husband agree to watch over the toddler. A tall, mysterious, shadowy person, Silas, meets man Jack and makes him forget he saw the boy in the graveyard. The assassin wanders away.

The ghosts hold a group meeting; the Owenses offer to be the boy’s parents, and Silas volunteers to be his guardian. It’s an unusual request, and the debate continues for hours until the Lady on the Grey, a ghostly goddess on horseback, arrives and suggests they exercise charity. The graveyard denizens agree at once that their community will protect and raise the boy. They name him Nobody Owens.

Silas, who can travel beyond the graveyard, brings food, books, and toys for Nobody—“Bod”—and the other ghosts teach him what they know of life. When he’s nearly five, he meets Scarlett Perkins, a girl who visits the park-like cemetery with her mother on sunny days. Scarlett and Bod become friends and play on the grounds.

The two children visit the deep underground crypt of the Indigo Man, the oldest burial chamber there, where sounds and images threaten the two children, but they realize the scary things are protections, like scarecrows in a field. Whispery voices say they’re the Sleer, guardians waiting for their master to return. When Bod and Scarlett climb back to the surface, they find that the police have been searching for her. Not long after, her parents find work in Scotland, and she visits the graveyard one last time to say goodbye to Bod.

Silas must leave for a while, and he brings the boy a substitute guardian, grey-haired Miss Lupescu. She feeds him weird salads that he hates and makes him learn things of no interest, like how to cry for help in dozens of languages.

Despondent, he naps near an old, decrepit grave but is wakened by three ghouls who invite him to join them for a delicious meal at their home world. He agrees, and they grab him and take him through the grave’s ghoul-gate into a horrid desert land under a deep-red sun and giant moons. Bod realizes they’ve kidnapped him and plan to make him into one of them. High overhead soar leather-winged creatures, the night-gaunts, and Bod remembers how to call for help in their language. The ghouls climb a cliffside stairway toward their home city of Ghulheim, Bod trapped in a ghoul’s backpack at the rear of the line. A giant dog-like creature bounds up the stairs. Its claws rip open the pack and Bod tumbles out over the edge, but he’s saved by a night-gaunt. The dog is Miss Lupescu in her true form as a Hound of God. She retrieves Bod and returns him to the graveyard.

When he’s eight, Bod sneaks out to Potter’s Field just beyond the graveyard fence. He climbs a tree but falls out and a teenage ghost somehow mends his damaged leg; she’s a witch, Liza Hempstock, whose body lies buried nearby. Liza asks Bod to find her a gravestone and he agrees, retrieves a ruby brooch from the Indigo Man’s crypt, borrows some old clothes from the gardener’s shed, and walks into town to sell the brooch and buy a gravestone.

At an antique shop, he shows the brooch to the owner, Mr. Bolger, who takes the item and locks the boy in a storeroom. He calls his partner, Mr. Hustings, who hurries over to examine the brooch. Bolger declares that there must be more where the boy found it, and he tells Hustings that the kid also might be the person wanted by a man named Jack. Liza materializes in the storeroom, where she confers on Bod the ghostly ability to disappear. The men open the room, can’t find the boy, begin to fight over the brooch, and knock each other out.

Bod steals a glass paperweight, escapes from the storeroom, collects the brooch—Liza insists he also take the calling card Bolger got from man Jack—and returns to the graveyard, where he gives Silas the card and tells him what happened. Mr. Owens punishes him with a spanking. Bod returns the brooch to the Indigo Man’s crypt, writes Liza’s initials on the paperweight, and places it on her grave. She thanks him.

One winter night when he’s 10, Bod notices that all the ghosts are edgy and singing a song about “the Macabray.” The next day, the graveyard’s ivy blooms, and town officials collect the flowers. That night, strange music brings out the townsfolk, who each receive a flower and begin to dance in the town square. Graveyard ghosts, along with the Lady on the Grey, appear and dance with the living people. Bod dances, ecstatic, until he’s exhausted. At midnight, the ghosts disappear, and the people trudge back to their homes. The next day, no one at the graveyard will talk about it; Silas explains that some things should be left unsaid.

At a hotel ballroom, 100 men meet in a Convocation. While the group secretary describes the charitable work they’ve performed over the past year, one member quietly chides man Jack for letting the boy escape the assassination job he started 10 years earlier. Man Jack replies that he has new leads and will shortly follow them up.

When he’s 11, Bod tells Silas he wants to attend school so he can learn more than graveyard ghosts can teach him. He points out that he can Haunt and Fade and has no fear of the assassin who lurks out beyond the gates. Silas gives in, and Bod enrolls in a local school. There, he makes himself too ordinary to remember, and he enjoys reading books from the school’s libraries.

A large boy, Nick, and a skinny girl, Mo, work together to steal lunch money from other students. Bod intervenes, and the victimized kids begin to defy the bullies. Mo gets Bod arrested on false charges, but Silas rescues him. Bod haunts Nick’s dreams and Mo’s daytime, but he and Silas agree to find other ways, instead of school, for Bod to learn about the outside world.

Scarlett, now 15, and her mom move back to town from Scotland. She rekindles her friendship with Bod, who explains his family’s murder and his odd upbringing. At the graveyard, she’s befriended by a nice man named Mr. Frost from the local historical society. She asks him how to do research on Bod’s family; he agrees to investigate it, then offers to report his results to her and Bod. When they visit him, he tries to kill the boy—he’s the original assassin—but Bod and Scarlett escape to the graveyard, pursued by Frost and four other men from the Convocation.

Bod hides Scarlett in the Indigo Man tomb. He tricks one pursuer into falling into a deep, open grave. He then goes to the crypt of the ghoul-gate and confronts three pursuers, who tell him they’re the Jacks of All Trades, an ancient group dedicated to extracting magic from the deaths of people they murder. An ancient prophecy tells of a boy who’ll wander between life and death and, when he’s grown, destroy the Jacks. Therefore, they must kill him. Bod opens the ghoul-gate, and all three Jacks fall into the other world.

The remaining Jack, Mr. Frost, sniffs out Scarlett’s whereabouts, finds her in the Indigo crypt, and takes her captive. Bod arrives and he tells the guardian Sleer that their master has arrived. The Sleer, a giant three-headed snake, appears, wraps around Jack, and pulls him inside the rock wall. Back above ground, Scarlett accuses Bod of using her as bait to catch Jack Frost and says Bod’s a monster, too.

Silas, just back home from his overseas part in the battle, takes Scarlett home, erases her memories of Bod, and convinces her mother to return with Scarlett to Scotland. Silas informs Bod that Miss Lupescu died in the battle against the overseas Jacks.

Now 15, Bod sees fewer and fewer of the ghosts and no longer can slip through solid tombs to visit them. Silas gives Bod a suitcase and money, explaining that Bod must leave the graveyard and seek his future in the land of the living. Liza gives him a goodbye kiss, and his adoptive ghost mother, Mrs. Owens, offers a tearful farewell. Bod steps out onto the street and walks down the hill, toward a world full of people.