The Graveyard Book is a young adult fantasy novel by Neil Gaiman. The title is an homage to The Jungle Book. In the book, a boy whose parents are killed is adopted by the occupants of a graveyard (as opposed to the animals in a jungle) and raised by them. Gaiman first had the idea for the story in 1985, seeing his then two year-old son Mike "pedaling his tricycle around a graveyard". Each chapter takes the form of a short story, each set a year or two apart as the protagonist grows up. Some of the chapters have direct analogs in The Jungle Book; for example, the chapter "The Hounds of God" has many parallels to the story Kaa's Hunting. The book was released on September 30, 2008 in the USA by HarperCollins and on October 31, 2008, in the UK by Bloomsbury Publishing, the original publishers of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter. The cover and interior illustrations of the US-edition were by longtime Gaiman collaborator Dave McKean; as was the UK edition intended for the adult market. The British edition intended for children was illustrated by Chris Riddell.
There is also a limited US-edition of The Graveyard Book with a different McKean cover as well as interior illustrations by McKean produced by Subterranean Press, as well as an audiobook edition read by Neil Gaiman, including a version of the "Danse Macabre" played by Béla Fleck.
There is also a limited US-edition of The Graveyard Book with a different McKean cover as well as interior illustrations by McKean produced by Subterranean Press, as well as an audiobook edition read by Neil Gaiman, including a version of the "Danse Macabre" played by Béla Fleck.
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