Mowgli Meets Dracula and the Wolfman

The Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman
Newbery Medal 2009, Carnegie Medal 2010

I first read this book back in October of 2009, long before I had this blog. Recently, I was assigned the audiobook version for a children's resources class, hence my post. While I will focus primarily on the plot and characters, I'd also like to speak a little of the book versus the audio version.

In the opening pages, the parents and sister of the main character (a baby boy) are murdered by the Man Jack, while the baby manages to escape to a nearby cemetery where he is promptly adopted by the Owenses, a married couple who died sometime in the 1800's. While the book chronicles the life of the boy (christened Nobody "Bod" Owens) through adolescence and his eventual confrontation with the Man Jack, the manner in which it is written is more akin to a series of vignettes than a traditional novel.

There have been complaints by some that the characters who populate the book, being ghosts, vampires, werewolves, etc., are inappropriate for the young readers at whom the novel is directed. However, it should be pointed out that these characters are all friends, teachers, and mentors to our young protagonist and that the entire work is also modeled upon The Jungle Books, in which a young boy is raised in the jungle by animals. Just as some animals intended Mowgli harm, but the majority looked after him, the majority of the supernatural characters here have Bod's best interests in mind.

As has come to be expected, Mr. Gaiman's writing is a brilliant marriage of Kipling's stories and characters with a modern setting and Mr. Gaiman's trademark wit. Regarding the audiobook, which is narrated by Mr. Gaiman, it has some nice additions, such as performances by Bela Fleck, and being read by the author himself provides perhaps the truest reading of the material. I personally prefer reading the book myself, however, as I found my attention wandering while listening to the audiobook for too long.

I read a year or two ago that a book focusing on Silas, Bod's mentor and the Bagheera character, was in the works, but I've not heard anything more about it. While I would certainly enjoy returning to Bod's world, this installment works perfectly on its own.

Grade: A

Congratulations to Mr. Patrick Ness!

Earlier today, Mr. Ness announced on his blog that he has won this year's Carnegie Medal for Monsters of Men, the third in the Chaos Walking trilogy. You can read my review of the series here.

In Mr. Ness's acceptance speech, he heavily criticized the closure of libraries happening all over Britain. It's terrible to think that library closures are not only an American problem, but it's also wonderful to have such powerful advocates. Please don't only read Mr. Ness's brilliant books, but go out and support your library, wherever you are!

More Than This Provincial Life

First, I'd like to apologize for my long absence. I've spent the last few weeks packing everything I own, moving 450 miles from Chicago home to Pittsburgh, and settling into the new apartment. For much of that time, I've been without Internet, so I'm only just now getting to write about the following book. I am also currently without a library card, having just moved, so posts may be sporadic for the next few weeks.

A Northern Light
by Jennifer Donnelly
Carnegie Medal 2003, Printz Honor Book 2004

In her small turn-of-the-century upstate New York town, Mattie Gokey is considered a bit peculiar. Along with her best friend, Weaver, she continues to attend the town schoolhouse daily, despite being sixteen, in the hopes of receiving her diploma and attending Barnard College. With her mother recently deceased, however, as the oldest child Mattie is expected to tend to her father's farm and her younger sisters. College, and the life it could bring, is a distant dream.

While working a summer job at a neighbouring hotel, the Glenmore, Mattie finds herself embroiled in a murder case, as she is the recipient of a number of letters the victim had written. Despite having been asked to burn the letters by the victim prior to her death, Mattie keeps them, slowly unraveling the motive of the murder.

The book tends to be marketed as a mystery due to the subplot involving the Grace Brown murder, but I would categorize it as an historical slice-of-life novel, as the focus throughout is on Mattie and the various events occuring around her. Those expecting a whodunit mystery will be rather disappointed here.

I felt that Ms. Donnelly did a wonderful job in conveying what ordinary life was like in rural New York in the early 1900's, from detailing mundane farm chores to the attitudes of the day concerning feminism and racial prejudice.  Her meticulous research is not just apparent from the lengthy bibliography in the back of the book, but from the quality and accuracy of the writing itself, which is somewhat rare, even in historical fiction.

More than anything, this book appealed to me because I liked the character of Mattie so much.  I could very easily relate to her, as I was always the odd one with my nose in a book, dreaming of distant locales more interesting than my own, and I thought the "word of the day" chapter headings were a fantastic touch, given Mattie's obsession with vocabulary and writing.  I do have to wonder, though, if the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast had any influence over Ms. Donnelly's writing, as Mattie often reminded me of Belle, just as her love interest, Royal, was a somewhat less chauvinistic Gaston.

Grade: A

Land of Confusion

The Chaos Walking Trilogy
by Patrick Ness
Consisting of: The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, and Monsters of Men
Guardian Award 2008, Carnegie Medal short-list 2009 (The Knife of Never Letting Go); Carnegie Medal short-list 2010 (The Ask and the Answer)

I first began the trilogy in November when my book club read The Knife of Never Letting Go. At first, I didn't particularly like it, as the protagonist Todd and the stream of consciousness style were both a bit annoying, but once the momentum started to build, it was difficult to put down.

The main premise concerns a planet, known only as New World, that has been colonized (presumably by Earthlings, though one cannot be certain, as they refer only to their ancestral home as Old World). On New World, there is a curious ailment, called Noise, that affects all men, broadcasting their every thought to those around them. Animals are also affected by this, but women are somehow immune. At the beginning of the first novel, we are told that all of the women of Prentisstown have died from a virus released by the native Spackle during a war decades earlier.

When Todd discovers a spot in a nearby swamp in which there is no Noise, he reports it to his adoptive parents, Ben and Cillian, who immediately pack up his belongings and urge him to flee, fearing for his safety. The quiet is, in actuality, a girl named Viola, recently marooned in the swamp when her scouting ship crashed. Having no way to contact the coming colonists she left behind, her only choice is to trust Todd and hope that the fabled settlement of Haven has the means with which she might contact the others. Thus begins an unrelenting race to reach Haven before Prentisstown and its power-mad mayor has the opportunity.

Along their journey, Todd and Viola encounter various other settlements, each with a different social hierarchy than Prentisstown, including a matriarchal society and another town where men and women live apart from each other. In the later installments of the trilogy, Ness delves deeper into gender issues, pitting Mayor Prentiss' group of men against a terrorist organization led by and comprised mostly of women. The stakes are amped up higher by Ness' choice to put Todd and Viola on opposing sides, connecting each of them to the leaders of each side (Mayor Prentiss and Mistress Coyle, respectively).

Ness also creates an intriguing race in the native Spackle, who share a collective consciousness with each other and the world itself. Their language is expressed through thought-broadcasting (the Noise so despised by the colonists), and late in the series it is questioned if the human race is capable of ever fully utilizing this thought network as the Spackle do.


While the first novel is narrated solely by Todd, subsequent installments add one narrator each, so the third volume has three distinct voices (Todd, Viola, and a Spackle known as 1017). Interestingly, the series uses different fonts for each character, so one knows at a glance whose thoughts are recorded on the page; however, several members of the book club that I attend have noted that the e-book does not maintain these different fonts.

I don't think I've read such a highly lauded series that so challenges readers' thinking since first reading His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. I cannot recommend this series enough, and although it is often dark and grim, the conclusion is a satisfying one in which we hope the characters might find the bright future of which they dream.

Series Grade: A+