In The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, an orphan boy is raised by ghosts in a cemetery, where he learns how to become invisible, haunt people’s dreams, and face his destiny. Published in 2008, this fantasy-adventure novel for middle-grade and young-adult readers became a #1 New York Times bestseller. It won the Newbery and Carnegie medals for best children’s book, the first time a work has received both awards. It also garnered a Hugo Award for science fiction or fantasy and received several other honors.

Author Gaiman is a leading figure in contemporary speculative fiction, having published nearly three dozen books for young readers and adults. His works include Neverwhere, American Gods, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane. He has written and co-written multiple stage plays, and many of his works, including Coraline and Stardust, have been adapted for theater, film, TV, or radio. As of 2022, The Graveyard Book was in development as a motion picture.

Illustrated by Dave McKean, the novel’s HarperCollins ebook edition forms the basis for this study guide.

Plot Summary

An assassin named “man Jack” enters a house at night and uses a knife to kill a man, his wife, and their daughter. He searches for the fourth family member, a toddler, but the little boy has wandered off into the night.

The boy arrives at a graveyard at the top of a hill, where the ghost of a long-dead woman, Mrs. Owens, greets him. The murdered family’s ghosts show up and beg her to protect the boy from the assassin, who has followed him. Mrs. Owens and her husband agree to watch over the toddler. A tall, mysterious, shadowy person named Silas meets man Jack and makes him forget he saw the boy in the graveyard, and the assassin wanders away.

The ghosts hold a group meeting; the Owenses offer to be the boy’s parents, and Silas volunteers to be his guardian. It’s an unusual request, and the debate continues for hours until the Lady on the Grey, a ghostly goddess on horseback, arrives and suggests they exercise charity. The graveyard denizens agree at once that their community will protect and raise the boy, whom they name Nobody Owens. Silas, who can travel beyond the graveyard, brings food, books, and toys for Nobody—“Bod”—and the other ghosts teach him what they know of life.

When Bod is nearly five, he meets and befriends Scarlett Perkins, a girl who visits the park-like cemetery with her mother on sunny days. While playing, the two children visit the deep underground crypt of the Indigo Man, the oldest burial chamber in the cemetery, where sounds and images threaten them. However, they realize the scary things are protections, like scarecrows in a field, and whispery voices introduce themselves as the Sleer, guardians waiting for their master to return. When Bod and Scarlett climb back to the surface, they find that the police have been searching for her.

Not long after, Scarlett’s parents find work in Scotland, and she visits the graveyard one last time to say goodbye to Bod. Silas too must leave for a while, but he brings the boy a substitute guardian, Miss Lupescu. She feeds Bod weird salads that he hates and makes him learn things of no interest, like how to cry for help in dozens of languages.

Despondent, Bod naps near an old, decrepit grave but is wakened by three ghouls who invite him to join them for a delicious meal at their home. He agrees, and they grab him and take him through the grave’s ghoul-gate into a desert land under a deep-red sun and giant moons. Bod realizes they’ve kidnapped him and plan to make him one of them. High overhead soar leather-winged creatures, the night-gaunts, and Bod remembers how to call for help in their language.

The ghouls climb a cliffside stairway toward their home city of Ghulheim, Bod trapped in a ghoul’s backpack at the rear of the line. A giant dog-like creature rips open the pack, and Bod tumbles over the cliff, but he’s saved by a night-gaunt. The dog is Miss Lupescu in her true form as a Hound of God. She retrieves Bod and returns him to the graveyard.

When he’s eight, Bod sneaks out to Potter’s Field just beyond the graveyard fence. When he falls from a tree, a teenage ghost mends his damaged leg; she’s a witch, Liza Hempstock, whose body lies buried nearby. Liza asks Bod to get her a gravestone and he agrees, taking a ruby brooch from the Indigo Man’s crypt to sell to raise the money.

Bod shows the brooch to the owner of an antique shop, Mr. Bolger, who takes the item, locks the boy in a storeroom, and consults with his partner, Mr. Hustings. Bolger declares that there must be more where the boy found it, and he tells Hustings that the child might be the person wanted by a man named Jack. Liza materializes in the storeroom, where she confers on Bod the ghostly ability to disappear. The men open the room, can’t find the boy, fight over the brooch, and knock each other out.

Bod steals a glass paperweight, escapes from the storeroom, collects the brooch—Liza insists he also take the calling card Bolger got from man Jack—and returns to the graveyard, where he gives Silas the card and tells him what happened. Bod returns the brooch to the Indigo Man’s crypt, writes Liza’s initials on the paperweight, and places it on her grave. She thanks him.

One winter night when he’s 10, Bod notices that all the ghosts are edgy and singing a song about “the Macabray.” The next day, the graveyard’s ivy blooms, and town officials collect the flowers. That night, strange music brings out the townsfolk, who each receive a flower and begin to dance in the town square. Graveyard ghosts appear and dance with the living people, but at midnight, the ghosts disappear, and the people trudge back to their homes. The next day, no one at the graveyard will talk about it; Silas explains that some things should be left unsaid.

At a hotel ballroom, 100 men meet in a Convocation. While the group secretary describes the charitable work they’ve performed over the past year, one member quietly chides man Jack for letting the boy escape the assassination job he started 10 years earlier. Man Jack replies that he has new leads and will shortly follow them up.

When he’s 11, Bod tells Silas he wants to attend school, pointing out that he can Haunt and Fade and has no fear of the assassin who lurks out beyond the gates. Silas gives in, and Bod enrolls in a local school. There, a large boy, Nick, and a skinny girl, Mo, work together to steal lunch money from other students. Bod intervenes, and the victimized students begin to defy the bullies. Mo gets Bod arrested on false charges; Silas rescues him, but he and Silas agree to find a way other than school for Bod to learn about the outside world.

Scarlett, now 15, moves back to town and rekindles her friendship with Bod, who explains his family’s murder and his odd upbringing. At the graveyard, she’s befriended by a nice man named Mr. Frost from the local historical society. She asks him how to research Bod’s family; he agrees to help and offers to report his results to her and Bod. When they visit him, however, he tries to kill the boy—he’s the original assassin.

Bod and Scarlett escape to the graveyard, pursued by Frost and four other men from the Convocation, and Bod hides Scarlett in the Indigo Man tomb. He tricks one pursuer into falling into an open grave before going to the crypt of the ghoul-gate and confronting three pursuers. They tell Bod they’re the Jacks of All Trades, an ancient group dedicated to extracting magic from the deaths of people they murder. An ancient prophecy tells of a boy, Bod, who will wander between life and death and destroy the Jacks when he’s grown. Bod opens the ghoul-gate, and all three Jacks fall into the other world.

The remaining Jack, Mr. Frost, sniffs out Scarlett’s whereabouts and takes her captive. Bod arrives and tells the guardian Sleer that their master has arrived. The Sleer, a giant three-headed snake, appears, wraps around Jack, and pulls him inside the rock wall. Back above ground, Scarlett accuses Bod of using her as bait to catch Jack Frost and says Bod’s a monster, too.

Silas, just back home from his overseas part in the battle, takes Scarlett home, erases her memories of Bod, and convinces her mother to return with Scarlett to Scotland. Silas informs Bod that Miss Lupescu died in the battle against the overseas Jacks.

Now 15, Bod sees less and less of the ghosts and no longer can slip through solid tombs to visit them. Silas gives Bod a suitcase and money, explaining that Bod must leave the graveyard and seek his future in the land of the living. Liza gives him a goodbye kiss, and his adoptive ghost mother, Mrs. Owens, offers a tearful farewell. Bod steps out onto the street and walks down the hill toward a world full of people.