The Graveyard Book

Author: Neil Gaiman
Format: Hardcover
            Paperback
Pages: 336
Recommended Age: 9+

Neil Gaiman is one of the major names in YA and children's science fiction. Even if you don't realize it, most likely you are familiar with his work. The animated movie Coraline and the live-action Stardust(Michelle Pfeiffer and Claire Danes) were both made from books by Neil Gaiman.

With The Graveyard Book, he has absolutely outdone himself, so much so that he was won a Newbery Award for it. The book is a sort of reverse ghost story, crossed with the classic boy raised by wolves concept. Instead of being a tale where the graveyard is the scary place and the ghosts are the bad guys, this story is about a boy who wound up alone in a graveyard as a baby, where the resident ghosts promptly adopt and raise him. It becomes a fun coming of age story where life lessons are learned in a most unique fashion until, finally, the boy finds that he must leave the graveyard and venture into the world beyond.

Warning: the book does open on a scary note(the boy ends up in the graveyard after his family is stabbed to death by a serial killer), but reverts to a child-friendly style immediately after that scene.