In life, Liza was believed to be a witch, so the villagers buried her in the Potter’s Fields (unconsecrated ground reserved for criminals) rather than in the graveyard. When Bod is about eight years old, he strikes up a friendship with a ghost named Liza. This helps children develop empathy, compassion, and responsibility to others. While cultivating a rich, diverse community is important to a child’s coming-of-age process, the novel also suggests that what’s even more important is that children form friendships with other kids their age. With the help of these teachers, Bod integrates into the graveyard community while also developing the skills he’ll need one day as an adult in the world of the living. The werewolf Miss Lupescu, meanwhile, visits yearly to offer language lessons to Bod. And as he grows, many of these ghosts become his teachers, instructing him in cursive, manners, and science, in addition to ghostly skills like Fading (disappearing) and Haunting. Through this, Bod is able to learn who’s who and how everyone-including him-is connected as part of the community. Bod is curious about his community from the moment he learns to talk, so Silas sets about teaching Bod to read the headstones in the graveyard. The novel insists that as children grow, they gradually become more connected to their communities. It’s those connections that shape a person’s identity and give them insight into who they are and how they fit into the world. With this, the novel suggests that developing a healthy community and friendships are crucial to the coming-of-age process.
As Bod grows up over the course of the novel, he becomes increasingly interested about himself and how he fits into the graveyard community.
When Bod wanders into the nearby graveyard, the ghosts who inhabit it-along with the resident vampire, Silas-decide to raise Bod as their own to protect him from Jack. The Graveyard Book follows the format of a classic bildungsroman-it’s a coming-of-age story that focuses on the education and maturation of its young protagonist, Nobody Owens, who goes by the nickname “Bod.” When Bod is a toddler, a mysterious man named Jack murders Bod’s parents and older sister but is unable to find the elusive toddler.
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