The Best Book for the End of Novemeber

It’s now my favorite time of the year: Thanksgivemas. Late November is awkwardly cold, the leaves are still orange and red, but now, there’s no Halloween to romanticize. Is it Christmas, is it Thanksgiving? Personally, I don’t care! All I know is that I am not sweating like a pig during the day, and that’s enough for me. 

It seems that there’s no media dedicated to this murky, forgotten time of the year that you inevitably lump in with the rest of Halloween or the approach to Christmas– that is, until I read a book that has changed lil’ ole me forever. I am a hopeless daydreamer when it comes to the “odd one out” trope, where the protagonist has a strange upbringing and the narrative presents it as the norm. It’s delightful and gets me every time, without fail. I found this book for 50 cents in my favorite used bookstore, and it now has a home on my bookshelf forever, though it’ll probably make some field trips as I force my friends to read it.

I have come to the conclusion that I have found the best end-of-November book to exist: dark and damp autumn leaves on the ground, dewy grass, foggy mornings, overcast skies, green things growing on cracking concrete and stone. The true vibe of the hazy November epilogue that I find delightful rests in the pages of Neil Gaiman’s hidden gem, The Graveyard Book. By the title, you’d expect it to fall into the less overcast orange and black blinks of October, but I firmly believe that it was made for the forgotten weeks of the year. 

A reimagining of The Jungle Book, the classic tale of a boy raised in the jungle, Gaiman’s reimagining takes place in a gloomy English graveyard that Nobody “Bod” Owens calls home after a tragic night leaves him with no family but the kind ghosts in the graveyard and his protector, Silas.

I have personally never had any attachment to The Jungle Book in the slightest, both the Disney movie and the book. The only time I had ever actually learned anything about the book was last year in AP European History, when we learned about Rudyard Kipling’s (the author of The Jungle Book) second most famous work, “The White Man’s Burden.” After that, I stayed away from Mowgli’s tale and continued to ignore the story as a product of its time; however, Gaiman’s tale completely exceeds the quality of the original work. 

Gaiman’s novel is imaginative and completely emanates November days in England where the sun sets at 4:00 pm, and a little boy wanders through an empty graveyard– only it’s not empty to him, as Nobody can see the ghosts that inhabit his unconventional home. 

I think about this novel every slow school day, every dreary drive to school in the fog. I think about it not because it’s some psychological horror, or some dramatic retelling of a kids show to be dark and edgy. I think about it because it is the epitome of the word “tale,” a word I would not apply to anything but Over the Garden Wall out of the media I have consumed within the past year. The imagination, the originality, and the masterful storytelling make this novel one of my favorite books that I have read this year, and I urge anyone looking for a book to finish November with to enter Nobody’s graveyard and watch him grow into his destiny. It’s the perfect book for people that look out the window and look at a tree outside, wondering what’s at the top of it.