Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book is a story of Nobody “Bod” Owens who was raised by an unlikely community in a very unlikely place. What do you think about a boy being raised by ghosts in a graveyard? Creepy? Not really. This book is a magnificent showcase of Gaiman’s ability to put every mystical creature we knew in one book, without making it appear like it’s a hurried, clumsy, lazy mixture of legends and myths.
While reading The Graveyard Book (which eventually became the subject of an experimental Book Share session in Cebu City, Philippines at the Terraces Garden of Ayala Center Cebu), I thought about Antoinette. My little girl, Antoinette, who is growing up to be very independent. She does her own thing and is not afraid of walking down pathways which otherwise scares her brother, Nicholas. In many ways, she is so much like me. Her fearlessness is making me nervous. I guess, my Mom felt the same when I started jumping cliffs, climbing mountains, and living in foreign lands.
At the end of The Graveyard Book, Gaiman wrote:
“There was a smile dancing on his lips, although it was a wary smile, for the world is a bigger place than a little graveyard on a hill; and there would be dangers in it and mysteries, new friends to make, old friends to rediscover, mistakes to be made and many paths to be walked before he would, finally, return to the graveyard or ride with the Lady on the broad back of her great grey stallion.”
Antoinette, when you are old enough to read this, please know that I am so scared to let you go, but I know that eventually I will have to. Basaha na nga libro Inday. Makasabot ra unya ka sa akong buot ipasabot,
Video taken on 06 October 2014 in Kalispell, Montana, U.S.A.
