As I was growing up, I was passionate about horses, in the way that many little girls are.

Naturally, my love for horses was something that became quite known around my small elementary school, and I was proud to be known as a horse-lover. But, I remember horse-lover being a title that limited me as well. Every time I went into the library, the librarian would search for a book for me about a little girl, similar to myself, who loved riding ponies. She was always successful in finding such books for me, and although I knew I would not enjoy the books, I was too timid to turn her down. The idea of reading about a little girl who had a pony and whos biggest issue was that she fell off of her pony, did not interest me. In many ways, while the young girl in the story may have looked like me, and lived a similar life as me, the character was extremely hard to relate to. This little girl was not facing the hardships of growing up, or questioning right and wrong, like I was. This book category that I felt limited to made me feel alone. I ultimately found stories that I felt applied to my life, and helped me cope with the problems I had to face. These stories did not have young girls that looked like me, or stories that directly mirrored by life, yet they did not feel far from home. I found The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkein, Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling, The Series of Unfortunate Events by Limony Snicket, and many more. These stories did not trap me in the world I knew, but took me to an alternate world, and let me learn from the characters there. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman allowed for a similar adventure. Although I read this book from a different perspective as a 21 year-old adult, I was still able to learn about my own life experience through the livelihood of the protagonist, Bod. I argue that this book was written to help children understand their lives, its pleasures and troubles, by growing up with Bod through the varying stories Gaiman gives to us. The reader is not expected to see Bod as a far away character in a Wonderland, but as a reflection

of the self, and the truth of tackling lifes adventures. This story is an embodiment of why children and adults alike need fantasy, and mythical stories, to deal with the realities of life. Before interacting with this story as a reader, it is important to explore the origins of the tale. Gaiman got the idea for The Graveyard Book when he watched his first son pedal through a local graveyard on his tricycle. He was merry, and youthful, yet surrounded by death. This scene brought Gaiman back to the Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling, where animals raised a young boyexcept in this story he envisioned a young boy being raised by the dead. But beyond the inspiration of this story, I feel it is important to understand the roots in which this story grows perhaps Gaiman would argue most literally (Gaiman 1999). I believe that this story dances between the literary categories of fantasy, and myth. Fantasy, in most European languages, means imagination, but in the literary context fantasy more readily means a work of fiction including other worldly settings or characters, a product of the transformative capacity of the imagination (Zipes 2009). Similarly, myths, Neil Gaiman explains in his 1999 article, A Reflection of Myth, begin as the stories that accrete to religions, then fall into disuse and are no longer seen as the literal truth. When no longer being seen as truth, myths transform into a type of fantasy, and compost down into the dirt to create a fertile ground for other stories and tales to blossom (Gaiman 1999). More precisely, mythology is defined as a legend of traditional narrative that often reveals human behavior and its natural phenomena by its symbolism (Merriam Webster Dictionary). While this story does not interact with G-ds, like many myths do, I feel it genuinely reveals truths of human behavior and life, and is rooted in the tales of traditional stories. As Gaiman may suggest, this story is mythical because it bloomed from the ground that myths have fertilized. The Graveyard Books ability to be fantastical is what makes it the gateway to understanding for children facing the hardships of life in the 21st century.

Carmen C. Richardson explains in her essay, The Reality of Fantasy that childhood has developed into a much more complicated time in life than it ever was before. This essay was written in 1977, and I argue that the intensity of the realities that exist in childhood today, in 2013, are even greater than they were then. Richardson suggests that these changing times require children to cope with the realities of today while developing inner resources which will equip them to face and conquer the dragons of tomorrow (Richardson 1977). She further suggests that fantasy, as a literary form, lends itself most readily to dealing with the realities of life. When the reader is introduced to the protagonist of Gaimans The Graveyard Book, Bod, we meet him as a toddler during a pivotal changing time in his life. As the man Jack is murdering his family, Bod escapes his crib and adventures into another worldthe graveyard. Gaiman cleverly has Bod escaping this tragedy of death, yet still entering a world of death. Immediately this sends the message to the reader that we survive in a world among our problems, and later we learn that beyond survive, we persevere. Neil Gaiman explains in his 1999 article, A Reflection of Myth, that fantastical stories are obliging. Gaiman goes on to explain that in his renowned comic series Sandman, his character Death was represented as a happy, and sensible sixteen-year-old girl, someone attractive, and fundamentally nice (Gaiman 1999). He recalls the responses he received about this character from his readers, and even from non-readers, who felt that such a depiction of death helped them get through the death of a loved one. Within this fantastical graphic novel his readers were able to learn lessons about the hardest part of life: death. There is a similar dynamic that occurs in The Graveyard Book. This story deals with ghosts, vampires, witches, monsters, and people, yet Gaiman challenges our expected emotions about such characters. We do not fear the ghosts, or the vampire, but instead we find comfort in their humanitywe relate to them.

Through the novel Gaiman teaches us the power of compassion by introducing us to characters that exhibit kindness in its truest form. We first see such humanity when Mistress Owens commits to being Bods mother: his mother wants us to protect himand if we can, we will[I am] as sure as I have ever been about anything (Gaiman 2008). Her ghost identity is cast away and we see her as a loving care-taker, one we either have and love, or one we long for. We grow to love Mistress Owens and believe that she just as alive as may people in our own lives. Later in the novel when we are introduced to Liza Hempstock, a witch, we see a similar demonstration of genuine humanity. Liza is willing to help Bod heal his leg and, maybe even more importantly, talk with Bod as a friend. She exhibits kindness, even though her face was neither friendly nor unfriendly and not even a little bit beautiful (Gaiman 2008). As she is a witch we may be inclined to place negative stereotypes onto her, expecting her to be mean and internally ugly, but instead Gaiman defies such expectations. Using this unexpectedly kind fantastical being, he allows us to witness that those we expect to be scary may be the most wonderful people we encounterthey may be the people we need to survive. Similarly, while graveyards are often feared by children (some may even hold their breath as they walk past to ensure no dead spirits are inhaled), the reader grows to see this graveyard as a place of security, filled with peoplenot ghostswho though dead, have kept their humanity. This use of scary fantastic places and people allows readers to learn that kindness can come in the most unexpected places, not only in the graveyard, but within their own lives. In the novel, it is outside the walls of the graveyard where the man Jack walks, a character that everyone learns to fear (Gaiman 2008). The man Jack is one member of a group, the Jack of All Trades, who collectively are the villains in the novel. I suggest that Gaiman purposefully chooses the name Jack as it implies that this man is not different from any other, as

Jack often means ordinary. By creating antagonists that most physically resemble the reader the Jacks are human with a name like Jack, Gaiman is suggesting that fearing the ordinary, every-day things is not unusual. As many children are dealing with such fears, the comfort of knowing that Bod as well as other relatable, yet unearthly, figures in the graveyard fear a plain man is comforting. Robertson suggests that this use of fantasy characters allows for familiar problems to be blown up to their true proportion, and enables children to see that their fears are not irrational (Robertson 1977). Further more, by creating a relatable protagonist (because of his character not his form), like Bod, Gaiman suggests to readers that even when evil occurs in such a familiar form, good can triumph. By having a human antagonist and relatable protagonist, Gaiman suggests to child readers who may be struggling with such moral conflict, that even when both good and evil can exist within us, good will prevail. Robertson explains that this complex understanding of the self is known as the invincibility of the human spirit and can be most readily understood by children through the reading of fantastical literature (Robertson 1977). By making the scary familiar and the familiar scary, Gaiman requires the reader to see that the world as something other than black and white. While childrens awareness of good and evil is often absolute, blurring such lines and allowing them to see themselves in the characters they may have previously seen as scary, challenges them to rethink dichotomy of good and evil. This fantastical setting of the graveyard and the people within it also allows readers to better understand the conflicts and potentials in growing up. Two years elapse between each chapter of the novel, which allows the reader to journey with Bod through his teenage years. The most uplifting, and, perhaps, the most difficult part of the book is the ending. Bod is 15 years old and deemed ready to see the world by his guardian and his family. The reader sees the way Bod

is nervous about the way the world was changing and can find comfort that this trouble of growing up is a universal conflict (Gaiman 2008). As Bod does, the reader clings to the words of Mother Slaughter: youre always you, and that dont change, and youre always changing, and theres nothing you can do about it, (Gaiman 2008). These words ring so undoubtedly true, and as Jason Zipes suggests in his article Why Fantasy Matters Too Much, they allegedly open the mysteries of life and reveal ways in which we can maintain ourselves and out integrity in a conflict-ridden world (Zipes 2009). When we first hear Bod speak with his guardian, Silas, about his departure from the graveyard, we can still hear the desperation of a young timid boy in his voice. Bod does not want Silas to leave him, and wants to go with Silas on his journey. Silas tells Bod that it is his turn to live. After these words are shared we see a change in the protagonist, and within this conversation, we see Bod grow up. We are able to be there to experience such growth, and in turn, learn from it. When Silas asked Bod if he would like company to the gates of the graveyard, Bod responds, Best if I do it on my ownI want to see life. I want to hold it in my hands. I want to leave a footprint on the sand of a desert island. I want to play football with peopleI want everything (Gaiman 2008). Zipes would suggest that such a strong inspirational statement within a fantasy novel allows us to identify the voids in our lives by generating visions of how we want to live them, and ultimately, realize our potential. Bods journey becomes one of our own, and by removing such a story from the world we know, and setting it in a graveyard, we are more ready to use Bods experience to better understand and live our own life. As the readers have observed tangible details of the graveyard and the life within, as they have eavesdropped on conversations, and experienced adventures, they are drawn into the microcosm of the graveyard and can experience and learn from the same emotions as its inhabitants (Robertson 1977).

Neil Gaiman writes that some see horror and fantasy as escapist literature, but I argue, and believe he would agree, that this belittles its function in the lives of readers. Rather, fantasy can offer a roadmap to guide the reader through a territory of imagination, which ultimately functions to show us the world we know from a different perspective (Gaiman 1999). The Graveyard Book functions as such a road map, allowing readers to learn the value of kindness, the nuances of good and evil, and the hardships and delights of growing up. By being a work of fantasy and myth, Gaiman allows readers to step back from their own lives and engage in universal problems without fear. The Graveyard Book provides lessons on emotion, family, learning, and growing up. By taking place in a graveyard with characters who are ghosts, this story enables the readers to see the problems and pleasures of life both starkly and realistically yet allows them to stand apart, in some way, and experience pain and tragedy without any fear. Because Gaimans story takes place in a secondary fantasy world, it allows children and adult reader alike to safely explore the problems and joys and of living. Silas tells Bod, People want to forget the impossible. It makes their life easier (Gaiman 2008). I argue that people need the impossible to make their life livable. Without fantasy we would be lost within our own world, unsure of how to tackle the strife that we endeavor. Fantasy stories allow us to find the ways in which to, in the wise words of Mistress Owens, face our life, its pain, its pleasure, [and] leave no path untaken (Gaiman 2008).