Yesterday Neil Giaman won a Newberry Award for his young adult novel The Graveyard Book. Gaiman says he was inspired by Rudyard Kipling (of Jungle Book fame) to write a story about a young boy whose parents are killed and who, instead of being raised by animals, is raised by ghosts. Gaiman heralded the launch of the book with an extensive speaking tour, reading one chapter of the book on each leg of the trip until the whole book was available (a live audio-book type thing) read by the author online. Last October, the book hit #1 on the NYT Bestseller list and I have to think that many of the readers were adults. True to Gaiman’s dark sensibility the book is anything but feelgood, but at the same time he displays his enormous talent for making you care desperately about his characters. On NPR this morning Gaiman puts the award in perspective, saying that the Newberry is like winning the Nobel Prize, it’s the one thing that all but guarantees your book will be on library shelves after you die.
Here’s Gaiman’s own thoughts on the honor.
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