Nobody knows

Newbery Medal winner Neil Gaiman's protagonist, Nobody Owens, learns about life, death, possibility, and loss in The Graveyard Book

It's called The Graveyard Book—which sounds scary.

And the opening scenes are scary.

A professional murderer with a long knife creeps silently through a house, leaving behind a dead mother, father, and their daughter. The murderer called Jack fails to dispatch their son, a toddler who hears the commotion and flees his crib. He manages to squeeze through a fence at a nearby graveyard and is rescued from his would-be assassin by dead folk—ghosts!

"It's not scary," said Neil Gaiman, winner of the 2009 Newbery Medal for his story of Nobody Owens, raised by ghosts, guarded by a vampire and a werewolf, helped by a witch, and hunted by an ancient secret order of "Jacks of All Trades"—mostly evil ones. Given by the American Library Association, the Newbery Medal honors the year's "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children."

Gaiman's point is that all books are collaborative—between a writer and the reader and also the reader's life experience. If, as adults, we believe that ghosts and vampires are scary, we bring that to our reading, he said in a telephone interview. Children, on the other hand, view The Graveyard Book as a grand story, filled with exciting adventures that shape a boy's character and make Nobody the somebody he becomes.

Gaiman's Newbery success comes on top of yet another: the February release in movie theaters of Coraline, a 3-D stop-motion animated feature film voiced by Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, and Ian McShane. Coraline is a feisty 11-year-old who enters an alternate universe where everything seems just a little bit better—almost too good to be true—and winds up battling to save herself and her family from sinister forces. The movie has been well received by critics and fans alike, both for its gripping story line and stupendous effects.

In telling Nobody's story of life in the graveyard, Gaiman, who has won numerous awards for his comics and graphic novels, adult and children's fiction, fantasies, and screenplays, said he wanted to follow a rule of good writing: Tell one big, true thing. In this case, don't be scared of people who are dead. But know that life is better, that its possibilities and potential are limitless.

Much as Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book uses the jungle as a metaphor for childhood, Gaiman said he uses the graveyard. "It takes a graveyard to raise a child," he quipped. But even as Bod (short for Nobody) battles the ghouls and demons that live on and beneath his home turf, he comes to realize he is not a ghost—and he must leave that world behind.

The last chapter of The Graveyard Book is about being a parent, said Gaiman, who is the father of three. It is about the "joyous tragedy" of doing your job. If you've done it right, you become redundant and your children leave, he said, or don't need you in the same way anymore. He understands that from experience. Gaiman said he read to his daughter, Maddy, every evening for a decade, the last book being The Golden Compass. He acknowledged being a "bit sad" now that she has outgrown that particular way of relating.

As a boy, Gaiman used to read to his little sister at his parents' behest. They gave him a small allowance to buy books she and he both would enjoy. And even then, the Newbery Medal, now considered by many the most prestigious children's book award an author can receive, meant something to him—perhaps a foreshadowing…. "I loved the books that won. Though in the UK (Gaiman grew up in England) they didn't have gold stickers on them to set them apart. But I loved the stories," he recalled, mentioning A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle) and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (E.L. Konigsburg).

Asked whether he targets boys or girls with his protagonists and plot lines, Gaiman said no, neither.

"Part of the joy of Coraline is her appeal to both genders. Boys like the book, which has a kickass female protagonist who does scary, adventurey things. It's the story that's important," he said.

Gaiman often encounters remedial reading teachers who tell him how much the story appeals to 13- or 14-year-old kids who don't read well. He said not much is written at that level to keep struggling readers' interest, and it can be rather dull. But the language in Coraline is simple, the sentences are manageable, and overall it's easy reading, he said.

Though he has won many awards, he acknowledges that the Newbery is "one of the big ones. It's huge, it's wonderful," he said. He has been writing for more than two decades, and in 1987, started writing comics. "It was a way to gain popular credibility," he said, though many people "laughed at you immoderately or you could get tea squirted in your face." Sandman, his award-winning series, remains popular today.

Restless by nature, ever willing to explore a variety of genres, Gaiman is releasing Blueberry Hill, a new poem picture book by him and Will Eisner and artist Charles Vess, as well as a two-part DC Comics Batman story called Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?

He also wants to write about his recent travels to China—a nonfiction book for adults and may edit his blogs to make a compilation of essays on writing.

Despite all the fame and glory associated with his graphic novels, fiction, and fantasy writings, when asked what one work he would want to be remembered for, he struggled with the notion. "It's like having to decide which of your three children would be shot if forced to make that choice," he said, "though there's a dozen things I've done that could march to oblivion and I wouldn't care."

Pressed for an answer, he brought up A.A. Milne, an English playwright, author, and editor of Punch magazine, who today is not remembered for that work—"except by some grad students putting together a thesis"—but for his stories about Winnie-the-Pooh, the beloved bear, and his friend, Christopher Robin.

"Children's literature has a special magic outlasting your time here," Gaiman said, acknowledging that it wouldn't be so bad to be remembered for The Graveyard Book, now a book for the ages.

About Neil Gaiman

Born: November 10, 1960, Portchester, England

Notables: The Sandman comics, Stardust, American Gods, Neverwhere, Anansi Boys, Coraline

Awards: Hugo, Bram Stoker, Nebula, Locus, Eisner, Squiddy, Quill Book Award for Graphic Novels, Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, Comic-Con Icon, Newbery Medal 2009

Nobody knows. (April 2009). Reading Today, 26(5), 19.