Let's say I give this book 4.5 stars. I'm not sure it rises to 
 To Kill a Mockingbird 
 levels (my 5-star standard), but it's pretty darned awesome. 
 When I was a child, I devoured everything macabre I could find. I was reading Edgar Allan Poe when I was 9. And not just his famous stuff, but his weird Victorian "alarms built into the coffin," "fears of being buried alive" stuff. I read everything I could find about vampires and ghosts and telekinesis and, to a lesser extent, werewolves (because they seemed so much less plausible to me). 
 I loved reading The Graveyard Book as an adult, and I would have loved it as a child. I wonder, though, how old my daughter will be before I think it's right to read to her. She's almost 7 now and it's not the death stuff I'd be afraid of exposing her to. We've already read 
 Bambi: A Life in the Woods 
 and are halfway through 
 The Long Winter 
 . Not to mention, we just read about the Punic Wars and how Hannibal drank poison when Carthage was sacked despite his incredible elephant-assisted victories against the Romans. I doubt she'd be bothered by the death part of this book any more than Nobody is. 
 The thing that would keep me from reading this book to my daughter right now is the intensity of the action. It's so suspenseful and desperate, so full of deceit and doubt. It's wonderful and human, but I'm not sure I'm ready for that part of the world to be revealed to her yet. Although I suppose I'd rather it be revealed to her in fiction before it's revealed to her in real life. 
 At any rate, what was it I loved about this book? I think it's mostly what I love about all of Gaiman's books. They are contemporary but they closely link the present with the past. They remind us that the fears and worries and hopes that we have now are shared with those who came before us. Gaiman taps into this allegory, this timeless mythology that touches me at some very basic level. 
 That's not specific at all. Specifically, I love the language. I love that I am in the graveyard. It's one of the things I enjoyed about Audrey Niffenegger's 
 Her Fearful Symmetry 
 . I remember walking through the cemetery near my Midwestern university and feeling the peace and the timelessness of the place. I long for the warmer weather so I can drag my children along as I traverse the New England churchyards. Gaiman brought that sense of peace and wonder and awe at the passage of time to his descriptions of the graveyard on the hill. It felt like home, in an odd (and rather cold) sort of way. 
 In addition, I like the way that Neil Gaiman's books remind me that there is a real person writing the book. Granted, that's a rather uncomfortable reminder since it carries with it the implicit "why haven't you written a novel?" question, but it's also reassuring that I could still, one day, perhaps, maybe, write a novel of my own (that people will praise and pan on Goodreads and then forget about). 
 I could oversimplify things and say that this is at its heart a coming-of-age novel. Certainly the concept that home changes when you leave it is present for Nobody Owens, that no matter how much you long for the comfort of the place you call home, it changes as you change, and when you try to go back, you find that it isn't the place you remember. 
 But it feels like more than a coming-of-age novel. Maybe that's just because I'm on the Owenses' side of the parenting adventure rather than Nobody's now, though. 
 Bottom line: I liked it a lot. And I will be watching for the time when it seems appropriate to read it with my daughter (and my son, but he's still on Cookie Monster, so it might be a while longer for him).