In The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman has created a charming allegory of childhood. Although the book opens with a scary scene - a family is stabbed to death by "a man named Jack" - the story quickly moves into more child-friendly storytelling. The sole survivor of the attack - an 18-month-old baby - escapes his crib and his house, and toddles to a nearby graveyard. Quickly recognizing that the baby is orphaned, the graveyard`s ghostly residents adopt him, name him Nobody ("Bod"), and allow him to live in their tomb. Taking inspiration from Kipling`s The Jungle Book, Gaiman describes how the toddler navigates among the headstones, asking a lot of questions and picking up the tricks of the living and the dead. In serial-like episodes, the story follows Bod`s progress as he grows from baby to teen, learning life`s lessons amid a cadre of the long-dead, ghouls, witches, intermittent human interlopers. A pallid, nocturnal guardian named Silas ensures that Bod receives food, books,