“The Graveyard Book manages the remarkable feat of playing delightful jazz riffs on Kipling’s classic Jungle Books.

One might call this book a small jewel, but in fact it’s much bigger within than it looks from the outside.”

— Peter S. Beagle, author of [The Last Unicorn]

I'm pretty sure I read [The Graveyard Book] before it won the [Newbery award | Newbery]. I loved the opening line ("There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.") and I enjoyed the first few chapters. I hadn't paid any attention to the praise from [Peter S. Beagle] on the back cover, and I wasn't thinking about the fact that the opening scene in [Kipling]'s [The Jungle Book]s is Mowgli toddling up the hill to the wolf den with Shere Khan the tiger close behind, demanding that the wolves return his [quarry]. I made it as far as Chapter 3, The Hounds of God, before it hit me.

The air was cold and they were decending a wall. Tombstones and statues jutted out of the side of the wall, as if a huge graveyard had been upended, and, like three wizened [chimpanzees] in tattered black suits that did up the back, the Duke of Westminster, the Bishop of Bath, and the Honorable Archibald Fitzhugh were swinging from statue to stone, dangling Bod between them as they went, tossing him from one to another, never missing him, always catching him with ease, without even looking. (Gaiman, 79)

Bod had been kidnapped by [ghoul]s, strong, stupid, self-aggrandizing creatures, and was being carried away to an abandonded city that they had not built, but had claimed for their own, just as Mowgli was kidnapped by the [monkey | Bandar-log] and taken to the Cold Lairs, an abandoned city that had been built by humans.

Two of the strongest monkeys caught Mowgli under the arms and swung off with him through the tree-tops, twenty feet at a bound. Had they been alone they could have gone twice as fast, but the boy's weight held them back. Sick and giddy as Mowgli was he could not help enjoying the wild rush, though the glimpses of earth far down below frightened him, and the terrible check and jerk at the end of the swing over nothing but empty air brought his heart between his teeth. (Kipling, 28)

Neil Gaiman had taken The Jungle Books as inspiration and written his own unique story, while managing to replicate the feeling of Kipling's stories.

With that in mind, I went back to the beginning. Small boy-child toddles up the hill and manages to evade his attacker, check. [Surrogate] parents decide to take him in and raise him, check. Parents present the child to the community formally, in the usual [council rock | meeting place], and are granted permission to bring him up and teach him the ways of the group, once a [Bagheera | respected outsider] vouches for the child. Check, check, check.

Gaiman riffs on The King's Ankus (buried treasure guarded by a [cobra | creature] with a warped, outdated view of the world outside the chamber and a [ankus | weapon] that always returns to the [trove]), Red Dog (Bod sticks up for a student at school and lures the bullies to a place where he can teach them a lesson) and Letting in the Jungle (Bod uses his connections to the residents of the graveyard and his knowledge of every inch of his home to trap and evade intruders). The Kipling quote above is from Kaa's Hunting, which starts with [Baloo] trying to teach a reluctant Mowgli the [We be of one blood, ye and I | Master Words of the Jungle], in all of the different tongues used by the jungle folk, so he can claim protection. Gaiman's version has [werewolf | Miss Lupescu], Bod's tutor, teaching him how to call for help in any language in the world. In both stories, the boy is soon kidnapped and puts his new knowledge to work. The stories are different, the details unique, and yet the structure and feel of the narrative are wonderfully familiar.

My favorites are The Spring Running (Kipling) and Danse Macabre (Gaiman). In both, something unusual is going on, and the residents of the community don't have time for the boy-child, who feels put out and abandoned. Both stories describe a magical time--the coming of spring in one case, a midwinter celebration in the other. Small snippets of quotes won't do the tales justice; you'll just have to go read them for yourself. Start with [Rudyard Kipling | Kipling], so that when you get to [Neil Gaiman | Gaiman] you can enjoy all the playful, spot-on allusions.

If you want to buy a copy of The Jungle Books, make sure it's plural--I picked up a few copies at the local used bookstore that were just the first half of the collection. Not all the stories are Mowgli stories--[Rikki-Tikki-Tavi] is in the first book--but both books have Mowgli stories.

The Graveyard Book (thing)