The Istoriaphile’s Corner

My sis and I fought over everything when we were kids.  Books, records, pizza, you name it, both of us wanted the better, bigger share.  We thought we’d grown out of most of that habit until we  started discussing books to talk about on this blog.  Barb insisted she wanted to write on Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book.  I wasn’t willing to give that one to her.  Mom & Dad, wherever you are, this is our attempt to share… BG: First, I think you have to discuss how this  is related to The Jungle Book. How this says maybe the dead are nothing to fear. LG: Well, it is an homage to the Kipling classic.  In Kipling’s book, Mowgli is raised by wild beasts of the Jungle, which was surely a strange, fearful place for Victorian Europeans. In The Graveyard Book, Nobody (Bod) Owens is protected and nurtured by the ghosts in an English Cemetery and death is a fearful unknown state for us.  In both books, the child learns valuable information from beings he would normally be taught to fear.  It could be both authors are trying to say the “unknown” doesn’t always mean “bad.” BG: It’s more than…