(*Gasp* Is that an image of a ghostly hand, wearing the One Ring, on the cover?!?!)

The Graveyard Book ~Neil Gaiman

–published 2008
–320 pages, HarperCollins
–5/5 stars

If I had the opportunity to script it myself I could not have come up with a more perfect way to spend the first day of what is arguably my favorite month of the year: reading Neil Gaiman’s long anticipated new young adult novel, The Graveyard Book in its entirety. I started shortly after midnight, October 1st, and it was my companion throughout this work and fun-filled day. For all intents and purposes the book did not leave my side all day. It waited patiently for me on the bedside table as I slept. It traveled with me to work to sit in my office for a brief shared lunch. It traveled with me to my off-site meeting and then back to a serendipitous reading spot. It went with me to the comic shop on request to say ‘hello’ to my friend Jeff and it traveled back home with me for one enchanted evening. And now it sits again by my bedside awaiting a new journey…but more on that to come.

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The Dangerous Alphabet ~Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Gris Grimly

–published 2008
–32 pages, HarperCollins
–5/5 stars

“A piratical ghost story in thirteen ingenious but potentially disturbing rhyming couplets, originally conceived as a confection both to amuse and to entertain by Mr. Neil Gaiman, scrivener, and then doodled, elaborated upon, illustrated, and beaten soundly by Mr. Gris Grimly, etcher and illuminator, featuring two brave children, their diminutive but no less courageous gazelle, and a large number of extremely dangerous trolls, monsters, bugbears, creatures, and other such nastinesses, many of which have perfectly disgusting eating habits and ought not, under any circumstances, to be encouraged.” (from the introduction)

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