The Graveyard Book is a YA (Young Adult) novel which won the 2009 Newbery Award the American Library Association gives out every year.  I listened to the audiobook which was read very well by the author.  The Graveyard Book begins with this man Jack who has killed everyone in this house and is now after the baby.  The baby escapes before the man can get up to baby’s attic room and the baby makes his way up the hill to the graveyard.  He is taken in by a couple of ghosts Mr. and Mrs. Owens and after much deliberation among the other ghosts in the graveyard the baby is allowed to live in the graveyard with the Owens his adopted parents and another who is dead but can move among the living, Silas who becomes his guardian.  None of the other ghosts can leave the graveyard.  The baby is given the name Nobody Owens, but they call him Bod for short.

The rest of the story is about what Bod learns as he is raised in the graveyard.  He gets all of his lessons from long dead ghosts and Silas teaches him things as well like how to read and write.  Each chapter is like a different short story in his life.  He makes a new friend at age 5 named Scarlett who is a live human visitor to the graveyard (which is also designated a natural area).  He takes a scary journey through the Ghoul Gate into underground desert territory of the Ghouls.  There is a once in a life time Dance Macabre when flowers bloom in the graveyard in the winter and dead dance with the living in the old town square.  This is the one time the dead can leave the graveyard.  And of course there is the villain in the story, Jack who must finish what he started and needs to kill Bod. That is one reason Bod is not permitted to leave the graveyard until he turns 14.

Overall it was a very fun kid’s book and I can definitely see why librarians might like it.  There is a whole section on how he learns to read and just loves to read any book he can find.  There is another part toward the end where the librarian helps Scarlett find out about Bod’s past by showing her how to use the microfiche machine.  A few parts may be a little bit scary, but nothing most 8 year olds couldn’t deal with.  It was an entertaining read.

The Handmaid’s Tale is set in the near future in a dystopian society. It is told from the point of view of a 33 year old woman who is a handmaid. In this society, handmaids are basically vessels for the Commander’s wives. By vessels I mean that their only purpose is to produce children which they won’t even see past the nursing stage. Handmaids wear all red with white wings on their shoulders which hamper the use of peripheral vision. They must walk everywhere in pairs with other handmaids and their original names are stripped away and they are given the names of the Commander they work for. So the narrator of this story is named Offred or “of Fred” belonging to Fred.

Society wasn’t always this way for her so she remembers the freedoms she once had. She thinks back on this past often throughout the book. So far I’ve mentioned three classes of people, the Commanders, the Wives, and the Handmaids. Just above the Handmaid’s in status are the Marthas. Marthas are the cooks, cleaners, and basically the servants of the household.   There are also Aunts. Aunts are the teachers/brainwashers who are strict and indoctrinated the captured women as the new Handmaids. The Eyes are the secret police who capture wrongdoers who don’t follow the new order, hang them and place them on hooks on the Wall as examples to the other citizens.

This is an adult book and there are scenes that are quite disturbing. One horrible scene is in the classroom with the Aunt and a girl who had been raped. All of the other Handmaid’s in the room chant at her that it is her fault until she breaks down and actually believes it.  There are also things called Salvagings where all of the citizens witness the execution by hanging of wrongdoers.  By wrongdoers, that can be someone who practices medicine who is not authorized, or people belonging to outcast religions like Jews and Catholics or those who commit crimes. In fact when this society was founded most of the Jews were put on a boat and exiled. Another form of punishment and is mostly for the elderly or the infertile is the Colonies.  The Colonies is basically an area where those unfit for society work out in the fields for plantations or work with hazardous and toxic waste.

There is an underground that emerges and a secret rebellion. The character of Moira is especially interesting in that regard because she was a Lesbian in the former world and highly rebellious in the new.   This book has a strong feminist undertone to it and I would suspect there could be analysis and discussions aplenty about that aspect of the book. It was written in 1985 and much of the themes continue to hold true today.  It doesn’t seem dated at all, possibly because of the apocalyptic nature of it and the fact that it is set in the near future.  There are also allusions to or hints of Nazi Germany and American slavery.  It is disturbing but also fascinating to read. Atwood writes in a kind of poetic style with lots of sentence fragments included with complete sentences. The work has a stream of consciousness quality in that way.  It wasn’t that difficult to read, however.