LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE TEACHING

The Graveyard book by Neil Gaiman

Glossary:

● Flibbertigibbet: A foolish, flighty, and overly talkative

person.
That it was the Owenses who had got involved in this
nonsense, rather than some flibbertigibbet johnny-come-
latelies, counted for a lot, for the Owenses were respectable
and respected.

● Drab: Lacking brightness or interest; drearily dull.

Bod, in his grey winding sheet, felt dowdy and drab.

● Anorak: A kind of heavy hooded jacket.

Scarlett put her hands into the pocket of her
anorak and walked down the hill without
saying good-bye…

● Skirmish: A minor short-term fight.

who wore the wax faces of my wife, taken by
a fever in Camulodunum, and my father, killed
in a border skirmish in Gaul.

● Toddler: a young child who is just beginning to walk.

That only left the little one, a baby barely a toddler, to take
care of.

● Amble: Move or walk slowly, without a hurry.

far beyond the ability of the groundskeeper or the
friends of the Graveyard to tame, and he ambled
over there, and woke a family of Victorian...
 ● Ululation: A long, loud, emotional howl or cry.
the Indigo Man threw back his head and let
out a series of yodeling screams, a full-throated ululation
that made Scarlett...

● “She dun’t”: informal contraction for “do not” or “does not”.

● “it en’t the first time”: Comes from “ain’t”, an informal contraction for: “am
not”, “is not”, “are not”, “have not”, “has not”.

● Ma’am: Contraction for “Madam”, a term to show respect and politeness

when talking to a woman. E.g: “Excuse me, ma’am, could I help you?”

Chapter 1 – How Nobody Came to the Graveyard:

● In the dark and scary beginning the man Jack kills a family with a sharp, long knife.
The toddler tumbles from his crib and toddles out the open door and up the hill,
escaping Jack.
● What do you think is the main reason why the ghosts decided to adopt the kid? Do
you think it was a good idea?

Chapter 2 – The New Friend

● Bod meets a live girl (Scarlet).

● The girl’s parents allow her to go to the graveyard to play with Bod.

● Bod and Scarlet play around, touring unknown places, they go far away for a while,
her parents get scared because they think she is lost.

● She must move to Scotland, but she convinces her parents to first take her for advising
Bod about it.

Chapter 3 - The Hounds of God

● Silas hires Miss Lupescu to look after Bod while he is gone. She is not very kind,
cooks Bod awful food and makes him memorize useless lessons like how to call help
in every language.

● Frustrated and unhappy because nobody listens to his complaints, he runs into three
Ghouls, who promise to give him food and adventure.

Biography of the author:

 ● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eJW63DiZh4&t=108s

It is worth taking a look to the interview since it has a huge impact when Neil Gaiman
wrote the aforementioned book. It talks about the reasons leading to the origin of the
story.

Local customs and background relevant to the text:

Topics seen here are really general -assassins, understanding the way assassins work, the
reasons why the commit their acts, orphans, ghosts- there is no need of having a deep
knowledge on a certain field or theme just to understand what is said and done; it would be
proper to have a good vocabulary range, since many non-common words appear throughout
the story. However, it is suggested knowing about antiquated behaviours from hundreds of
years ago from the current time of the story, since Bod learned from these ghosts living in the
graveyard during all that time and those antiquated behaviours are shown throughout the
chapters, highlighting the part of strictness in following rules of the community they were
living in.

Juan Pablo Rodríguez

Andrés Camilo Betancurt