The Graveyard Book

The graveyard book / Neil Gaiman ; with illustrations by Dave McKean. – New York : HarperCollins, c2008.
312 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
ISBN: 9780060530921 (trade binding)

813.54

1. Cemeteries -- Fiction. 2. Dead -- Fiction. 3. Newbery Medal. 4. Orphans -- Fiction. 5. Supernatural -- Fiction.

As a toddler Nobody “Bod” Owens jumped the rail of his crib and slipped out of his house and wandered up to an old cemetery. It was a good thing for him that he did. A ruthless assassin was methodically knifing to death everyone in his family, and little Bod escaped the murderer just in time to be taken in by the ghostly inhabitants of the graveyard. For the next decade and a half they raise, educate, care for him, and keep him safe from the man who’s still determined to kill him.

As the only living resident of the graveyard, Bod is taught a few special skills: skills normally reserved only for the deceased, skills like fading, sliding, and dreamwalking. He learns his ABCs from the gravestones. He learns to stay away from dangerous places, like the ghoul-gate (every graveyard has one) and the school in town. There are also scary encounters with the guardian of the treasure deep under the hill, the Indigo Man with his sharp stone blade, and Jack the murderer.

Like its model, Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, The Graveyard Book alternates between fast paced, frightening adventure and reassurance that there are more experienced helpers and protectors to guide a child through the trials of growing up.

Good masters! Sweet Ladies! : voices from a medieval village

Good masters! Sweet Ladies! : voices from a medieval village / Laura Amy Schlitz; illustrated by Robert Byrd.— Cambridge : Candlewick Press, 2007.

85 p. : col. ill. ; 27 cm.
ISBN: 9780763615789
Original title: Villeins and vermin, simpletons and saints
Bibliography: p. 82-85.

Contents: Hugo, the Lord's nephew -- Taggot, the blacksmith's daughter -- Will, the plowboy -- Alice, the shepherdess -- Thomas, the doctor's son -- Constance, the pilgrim -- Mogg, the villein's daughter -- Otho, the miller's son -- Jack, the half-wit -- Simon, the knight's son -- Edgar, the falconer's son -- Isobel, the Lord's daughter -- Barbary, the mud slinger -- Jacob Ben Salomon, the moneylender's son and Petronella, the merchant's daughter -- Lowdy, the varlet's child -- Pask, the runaway -- Piers, the glassblower's apprentice -- Mariot and Maud, the glassblower's daughters -- Nelly, the sniggler -- Drago, the tanner's apprentice -- Giles, the beggar.

1. Great Britain -- History 13th century -- Drama. 2. Middle Ages--Drama. 3. Monologues.

812.6

A series of monologues and two dialogs introduce the lives of twenty-three children near an English manor in 1255. There are interspersed with short one-page essays on crop rotation, pilgrimage, the Crusades, Jews in medieval society and the legal status of runaways. The plays were written by a school librarian to teach young students about life in the middle ages. They were written so that everyone in the class could be a star “for three minutes at least.”

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! was awarded the John Newbery Medal in 2008 for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children by the Association of Library Services to Children, a division of the American Library Association.

The Higher Power of Lucky

Last night I finished reading The Higher Power of Lucky, this year’s Newbery award winner. It’s a truly wonderful story fully populated with memorably eccentric adult and juvenile characters.

Patron, Susan.

The higher power of Lucky / Susan Patron ; with illustrations by Matt Phelan. – 1st ed. – New York : Atheneum Books for Young Readers,© 2006.

134 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

ISBN : 978-1-4169-0194-5
"A Richard Jackson book."
Awarded the 2007 John Newbery Medal by the Association of Library Services for Children, a division of the American Library Association

Subjects:
Abandoned children – California – Fiction
Interpersonal relations – Fiction
Mojave Desert (Calif.) – Fiction
JUVENILE FICTION / Family / Orphans & Foster Homes

Annotation:
Ten-year-old Lucky Trimble lives in a trailer in Hard Pan, California (pop. 43) in the northern Mojave Desert. She has a job cleaning up around the Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center, which is where all the anonymous groups hold their meetings. She cleans up all the cigarette butts left by the recovering alcoholics so they won’t offend the recovering smokers in the Smokers Anonymous meeting, and then all their candy wrappers so the wrappers won’t offend the recovering overeaters when they meet. Lucky eavesdrops. All the people at these meetings got over the bad problems in their lives by finding a Higher Power, and Lucky wants to know how they did it because she has a bad problem. Two years ago, after her mother died, her father – who never wanted children – sent for his first ex-wife to come and take care of Lucky. Now Lucky is afraid that she is planning to leave, and Lucky will need a new mother, one that will not be so foolish as to marry a man who doesn’t want children and one cautious enough to avoid downed power lines after a thunderstorm so as to not get electrocuted.