The Graveyard Book

A girl's parents split up and she lives with her mother. Bod, of course, has a far less traditional family structure. He's orphaned at the beginning of the book, his adoptive parents are ghosts who have been dead for many years, and his guardian is something in between alive and dead.

The story begins with the murder of Bod's whole family: parents and older sister. They die by stabbing, and Bod is under threat from this murderer for most of the story and hidden in a graveyard for safety. Ghouls kidnap him and threaten to eat him. He's also threatened by bullying kids at school and nearly arrested. Someone is hit by a car, a man is poisoned and knocked out. Fights ensue with knives, strangling cords, and guns drawn and there are injuries. Pains are taken not to kill the villains, but one character is consumed by giant snakelike creature. Some scares past the ghoul-gate with howling creatures in pursuit and in a deep, dark grave where a creature threatens two young kids; they decide not to be afraid and the tension dissipates. Bod is spanked by his ghost-father with the explanation that when the father was alive ages ago this kind of discipline was normal. Talk of the death of someone close to Bod and more fighting amongst supernatural creatures. A witch tells the story of how she was drowned and burned and how the whole town caught the plague afterward. Lots of talk of how the inhabitants of the graveyard died. A discussion of suicide and others who dwell in the unconsecrated ground of the cemetery, including criminals who were hung. Ghouls talk of plague pits being "good eatin'."

A kiss on the cheek. Talk of couples rolling around in the graveyard.

Occasional mild language includes "bollocking," "bloody," "blooming," and "blast," and characters are referred to as "fiddle-pated old dunderhead," "bleeder," "little grub," "weird," and "little snot," and told to shut their "offal-hole."

​​Adults drink gin and whisky on one occasion. Reference to a character drinking "like a fish."