The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book, winner of the John Newberry medal, is another example from the slightly bizarre, slightly dark, almost Roald Dahl-ish imagination of Neil Gaiman. Nobody "Bod" Owens is only a toddler when his parents and his sister are killed by a ruthless assassin (Jack). The precocious toddler, however, has already escaped from his crib and gone up the hill to the graveyard. The toddler is taken in by the Owens', a ghost couple, and grows up protected by a graveyard of ghosts and a guardian vampire. Unfortunately, when Jack returns to finish the job many years later, Bod alone must battle the man who killed his family.

“The boundaries are always there—between the graveyard and the world beyond, between life and death, and the crossing of them.” - Neil Gaiman