The Graveyard Book Is Filled With O N Mastic Play

By Author: Apple
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Bod's guardian is Silas, perhaps named after that other famous caregiver, Silas Marner. He has some things in common with Stephenie Meyer's Edward (Twilight), but Silas makes himself truly useful by leaving the graveyard at night and returning with food and supplies for Bod. When he decides that it's time for Bod to learn to read, he brings in two alphabet books and The Cat in the Hat. Then he has Bod practice his lessons by finding each letter of the alphabet on a headstone. It's lucky for Bod that Ezekiel Ulmsley's tombstone is still readable.

The Graveyard Book is filled with o n mastic play, as when the poet Nehemiah Trot gives the adolescent Bod advice about his relationship with Scarlett: "Oh! You must go to her and implore her.... You must call her your Terpsichore, your Echo, your Clytemnestra. And thus...shall you win your true love's heart" (p. 232). In another part, the scurrilous creatures that come from the Ghoul Gate refer to one another as the Duke of Westminster, the Honorable Archibald Fitzhugh, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Emperor of China, and the 33rd President of the United States, for gruesome ...
... reasons. Elizabeth Hempstock was killed and buried as a witch and so Omega Replica Watches was given no headstone. Bod sets out to get one for her, and when he asks what should go on it, she replies, "My name. It must have my name on it, with a big E, for Elizabeth, like the old queen that died when I was born, and a big Haitch, for Hempstock" (p. 117).

Chapter 7 is entitled "Everyman Jack." I like the way Gaiman plays with such names as Jack Frost, Jack Tar, Jack Dandy, Jack Be Nimble, and Jack Ketch because they made me think of Charles Dickens who in his Tale of Two Cities writes about "everyman Jacque" and even has a Jacque One, Jacque Two, and Jacque Three. It is because Jack is a term for the common man that we have such modern words as jackhammer, jack knife, car jack, hijack, and even jacket. In Caiman's book his Jacks of All Trades are the assassins.

Name games aside, Caiman's tale is delightfully spooky, but also heartrending, funny, and instructive at various times. The lovable characters who reside in the graveyard have much to say about life even though they Tag Heuer Carrera Replica Watches are dead, and Bod proves an apt pupil. Although on the surface the story might seem too horrific for younger children, the violence is no worse than typical fairy tale violence (where wolves eat grandmothers), and the fright readers will feel is more entertaining than disturbing. This is a good read for all ages.