#FirstLineFriday Submissions Are Now Closed! Here’s the Answer to Our Quiz, and the Names of Our Winners!

/ Marcia

Submissions for #FirstLineFriday are officially closed now. My thanks to all who emailed me with their guesses. Today, we have 2 winners: Annabelle Franklin and Sarah Brentyn.  Congratulations, and I hope you enjoy your prize, Annabelle. (Sadly, I couldn’t talk Sarah into accepting one, but I’m still happy she knew the answer, and wanted to play, anyway.)

And now, here’s the answer to today’s quiz:

“There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife” is the opening line to The Graveyard Book,  a young adult fantasy novel by the English author Neil Gaiman, simultaneously published in Britain and America in 2008. The Graveyard Book traces the story of the boy Nobody “Bod” Owens who is adopted and reared by the supernatural occupants of a graveyard after his family is brutally murdered.

Gaiman won both the British Carnegie Medal and the American Newbery Medal recognizing the year’s best children’s books, the first time both named the same work. The Graveyard Book also won the annual Hugo Award for Best Novel from the World Science Fiction Convention and Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book selected by Locus magazine subscribers. (As an aside, Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors, and this book is a good reason why. It is well worth the read, even if the genre is not one you regularly choose.)

AMAZON SAYS:

Neil Gaiman’s perennial favorite, The Graveyard Book, has sold more than one million copies and is the only novel to win both the Newbery Medal and the Carnegie Medal. This middle grade novel is an excellent choice for tween readers in grades 5 to 6, especially during homeschooling. It’s a fun way to keep your child entertained and engaged while not in the classroom. (Note: It is also a lot of fun for us grown-ups, too, as you might guess from the number of awards it won, including that Hugo Award for Best Novel.)

Bod is an unusual boy who inhabits an unusual place—he’s the only living resident of a graveyard. Raised from infancy by the ghosts, werewolves, and other cemetery denizens, Bod has learned the antiquated customs of his guardians’ time as well as their ghostly teachings—such as the ability to Fade so mere mortals cannot see him.

Can a boy raised by ghosts face the wonders and terrors of the worlds of both the living and the dead?

The Graveyard Book is the winner of the Newbery Medal, the Carnegie Medal, the Hugo Award for best novel, the Locus Award for Young Adult novel, the American Bookseller Association’s “Best Indie Young Adult Buzz Book,” a Horn Book Honor, and Audio Book of the Year.

Buy The Graveyard Book HERE

That wraps it up for this week, folks. Thanks so much for taking part, and I hope you’ll stay tuned for another #FirstLineFriday quiz next week. See you then!

15 thoughts on “#FirstLineFriday Submissions Are Now Closed! Here’s the Answer to Our Quiz, and the Names of Our Winners!”

    • You could call it a nursery rhyme, and I’d still enjoy it. It was so quirky and weird and just wonderful, the way he usually is. I think you’d like it. Let me know if you decide to check it out. 🙂 And thanks for stopping by! 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    • I’m with you on Neil Gaiman, though The Graveyard Book wasn’t my first intro to his work. But he’s wonderful! And I hope you enjoy The Emissary. I’ll be interested in hearing what you think! Congratulations again, on recognizing the line, and I hope you’ll be back to play next Friday, too! 🙂 ❤

      Like

      Reply

Looking forward to hearing what YOU think! NOTE: If in doubt about leaving comments on this blog, please read the privacy statement in the menu at the top of the page.

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s