Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

2009 Newbery Medal Winner

Ratings Explanation

Language:  Use of the word “hell” to describe the underworld.

Violence:  The family of the main character (Bod) is murdered in their sleep at home.  Bod is hunted throughout the book by the evil character Jack.  Bod is kidnapped by ghouls and taken to their underworld.  Descriptions of their ghoulish activites and appetites (eating creatures and crunching bones).  Some of the ghouls are killed.  Bod meets a witch girl living in the graveyard who was drowned and burned.  Bod is locked in a storage closet by a pawn shop owner.  Bod forces himself into the dreams of the school bully to scare him.  The police pick him up and hit his guardian Silas with their car.  Jack returns and tries to kill Bod with a knife; he holds Bod’s friend Scarlett at knifepoint; Jack is killed by the Sleer, a creepy, snake-like creature.

Adult Themes:  Bod’s family is murdered when he is just a baby.  He must deal with growing up in the surreal world of the graveyard.  He is persistently hunted throughout the book by either the man Jack, the ghouls, or bullies at the neighborhood school.  The deaths of some of the graveyard ghosts are described (again, not in vivid detail).  Jack suffers a violent death in the end which Bod orchestrates.

Synopsis

Nobody Owens (“Bod” for short) is just a toddler when he is adopted by the ghost couple Mr. and Mrs. Owens, graveyard residents, after his family has just been murdered.  The entire graveyard of spirits help raise the boy, many of whom are reluctant to allow a living boy in their realm until they realize they may be his only hope for survival.  Bod is given the “Freedom of the Graveyard”, which enables him to see all the ghosts and to replicate some of their talents, such as “fading”(disappearing).  He is not allowed to leave the graveyard.  Another resident, Silas, a man who is neither dead nor alive, agrees to be his guardian and teach him skills he will need to survive one day in the real world.  As Bod grows, he becomes curious about why his family was killed.  He knows that one day the man Jack will come back after him.  Bod meets interesting characters who live in the graveyard, such as Liza Hempstock, a witch girl who was drowned and burned at the stake, and Caius Pompeius, the oldest resident who was buried in Roman times.  Bod’s only contacts are with the dead; he has no living children as friends until he meets Scarlett, a little girl who sometimes plays in the graveyard.  When she moves away, he is left with only his ghost friends again.

One day three ghouls arrive and promise Bod a better life, and he unwittingly travels with them to their underworld.  He then realizes he’s been kidnapped.  Miss Lupescu, a friend of Silas’s, enters the underworld as a werewolf and rescues Bod.  As Bod grows, so does his restlessness, and when Scarlett returns he agrees to leave the graveyard with her to solve his family’s murder mystery.  Unknowingly, the two of them are being helped by the kindly “Jay” Frost, who is really the man Jack in disguise.  Mr. Frost tells Bod he can help him and they return to the home where Bod’s family was killed, now being rented by Mr. Frost.  He takes Bod upstairs and pulls out a knife.  Bod escapes and he and Scarlett go back to the graveyard to an underground crypt where the “Sleer” lives, a hideous snake-like creature with three heads that guards a treasure.  Jack follows them, is tempted by the treasure and is killed by the Sleer.  Silas erases Scarlett’s memory, she leaves, and Bod is left alone again.  As he grows older, he finds his ability to fade and see the ghosts weakening.  Silas tells him it is finally time for him to leave the graveyard and join the living, and Bod leaves, determined to see the world.

The murder of Bod’s family in the beginning of the book, though not explicit in detail, sets the overall tone for the book.  It is a somber yet fascinating story of a boy being raised by ghosts; there are no overtly disturbing images of death or violence.  But some children may be too sensitive for this book–I could see my youngest having nightmares of being kidnapped by ghouls–while others may enjoy the ghosts and other-worldly characters.  The graveyard characters are loving and gentle, not creepy.  You find yourself growing very fond of the mysterious Silas and rooting for Bod to survive and thrive.

©2010 The Literate Mother