The Graveyard Book
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50 free The Graveyard Book trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book opens with a killer on the stairs and a toddler who slips out of the house and up the hill to a cemetery, where the dead decide to raise him. What follows is part ghost story, part coming-of-age tale: each chapter finds Nobody Owens a little older and a little closer to the world beyond the gates. This quiz follows Bod from his first night among the tombs to the day he walks out for good. Expect questions on his guardian and teachers, the companions he finds among the living and the dead, the creatures that lurk under the hill, and the brotherhood that wants him dead. A final stretch covers how the novel was written, illustrated, celebrated and adapted. It suits readers who have just finished the story, classes and reading groups studying it, and anyone who wants a printable set of questions with answers and short explanations.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which classic did Neil Gaiman rework as the tale of Nobody Owens, with ghosts replacing animals?
The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book gave Gaiman his template: Mowgli grows up among jungle animals, Bod among the dead, and some chapters mirror Kipling's stories one for one.
Q 02In The Graveyard Book, what is Bod's guardian hinted to be, though the novel never says so?
A vampire
A vampire is the clear implication: he casts no reflection, sleeps in a steamer trunk and takes a bat-like form, yet the text never names what he is.
Q 03In The Graveyard Book, what kind of creature is Bod's strict tutor Miss Lupescu revealed to be?
A werewolf
A werewolf, though her kind prefer the name Hounds of God: they see the change as a gift and will chase evildoers to the gates of Hell.
Q 04What was Neil Gaiman's young son riding in a cemetery when the idea for The Graveyard Book struck?
A tricycle
A tricycle: watching the boy pedal happily between the graves in 1985, Gaiman pictured a child raised among the dead, then took over twenty years to write the story.
Q 05Which top American prize for children's literature did Neil Gaiman win with The Graveyard Book?
Newbery Medal
Newbery Medal judges pick the year's most distinguished American children's book; it later took Britain's equivalent too, a double no book had managed before.
Q 06In The Graveyard Book, who becomes Bod's guardian, the only resident able to leave and fetch food?
Silas
Silas belongs to neither the living nor the dead, so he alone can walk out of the gates, and he promises to find a stand-in whenever he must travel.
Q 07In The Graveyard Book, which creatures with titles like duke and bishop drag Bod through a grave?
Ghouls
Ghouls promise him a life of feasting, but they mean to make him one of them or eat him, and only a lesson he had sulked through saves him.
Q 08In The Graveyard Book, which surname does the man Jack use while posing as a kindly neighbour?
Frost
Frost is the name he hides behind: as Mr. Jay Frost he has moved into the very house where he murdered Bod's family.
Q 09In The Graveyard Book, what does Bod's guardian hand him along with money when it is time to leave?
A passport
A passport in the name Nobody Owens is the parting gift: at about fifteen he is losing the power to see the dead, so he walks out to find the living world.
Q 10In The Graveyard Book, what do the living and the dead do together on the night of the Macabray?
Dance
Dance is all they do until the clock strikes twelve again, and by morning the living remember nothing while the dead refuse to speak of it.
Q 11In The Graveyard Book, which living girl befriends the young Bod while her parents read nearby?
Scarlett
Scarlett moves away to Scotland soon after, then returns as a teenager and stumbles back into the cemetery after catching the wrong bus.
Q 12Which privilege from the dead lets Nobody Owens walk through walls in Neil Gaiman's novel?
Freedom of the Graveyard
Freedom of the Graveyard also lets him see in the dark, but it works only inside the gates and ebbs away as he grows up.
Q 13In The Graveyard Book, what do the parents of Bod's young playmate assume that Bod must be?
A friend she invented
Q 21In The Graveyard Book, which witch buried without a headstone casts the spell that frees Bod?
Liza Hempstock
Liza Hempstock was drowned and burned as a witch and laid in unhallowed earth, which is why she, unlike the other ghosts, can follow Bod beyond the gates.
Q 22In The Graveyard Book, which figure comes for every person at the moment they die?
The Lady on the Grey
The Lady on the Grey also settles the quarrel over baby Bod by urging the dead to be charitable, and years later she promises him a ride on her horse one day.
Q 23In The Graveyard Book, what does Bod paint with initials to serve as the witch's missing headstone?
A glass paperweight
A friend she invented is what they take Bod for, so they keep bringing her to play among the graves without knowing who she meets there.
Q 14In which country is the hilltop cemetery where Bod grows up in The Graveyard Book?
England
England is the setting: the dead include a Roman who reached Britain a hundred years after the first of his people, and one tomb is older than the Celts.
Q 15In The Graveyard Book, what are Nick Farthing and Mo Quilling, whom Bod decides to scare?
School bullies
School bullies who film younger pupils shoplifting and then blackmail them for their money; standing up to the pair costs Bod his anonymity.
Q 16In The Graveyard Book, what does Bod's guardian use, alongside alphabet books, to teach him to read?
Gravestones
Gravestones become his primer: he copies their inscriptions letter by letter, and he is busy doing so when a living girl first speaks to him.
Q 17In The Graveyard Book, which ability taught by Mr. Pennyworth lets Bod slip from people's notice?
Fading
Fading makes him invisible only while nobody is paying attention, and he struggles with it until a witch's spell makes it work.
Q 18In The Graveyard Book, what convinced the Jacks of All Trades that the infant Bod had to die?
An ancient prophecy
An ancient prophecy said a boy would bring about the end of their order; by killing his family they set that very ending in motion.
Q 19In The Graveyard Book, what does Bod trick the man Jack into declaring himself to the Sleer?
Its master
Its master is what the Sleer has awaited for thousands of years, so it wraps him in its coils and pulls him into the rock to keep him forever.
Q 20Which British prize for children's writing did The Graveyard Book add to its top American award?
Carnegie Medal
Carnegie Medal judges made it the first title to hold both that prize and its American counterpart, and the UK children's edition was shortlisted for its pictures too.
A glass paperweight from the antiques shop where he was held prisoner does the job, after his plan to buy a real stone nearly got him sold to his family's killer.
Q 24In The Graveyard Book, which of the Sleer's treasures does Bod take to sell at an antiques shop?
The brooch
The brooch, a huge red stone set in black metal worked into a snake-like creature, tugs at everyone who holds it, and its keeper warns that it always returns.
Q 25In The Graveyard Book, what name is given to the unconsecrated ground beyond the cemetery fence?
Potter's Field
Potter's Field holds those once denied a churchyard grave, such as suicides and criminals, and its dead are not bound by the cemetery's rules.
Q 26In The Graveyard Book, what killed the villagers who watched the witch's execution a week earlier?
The plague
The plague arrived in a carpet sent from London and took everyone who had watched her die, and all of them went into one mass grave.
Q 27Which science fiction prize for Best Novel went to The Graveyard Book, a children's story?
Hugo Award
Hugo Award voters at the World Science Fiction Convention chose it as Best Novel, while Locus readers named it their best young adult title.
Q 28In The Graveyard Book, which secret order protecting the borders of things includes Bod's guardian?
The Honour Guard
The Honour Guard spends years hunting the killers' brotherhood across the world, and the fight costs the life of one of Bod's teachers.
Q 29In The Graveyard Book, what does Bod's guardian take from the girl Bod hid during the final fight?
Her memories
Her memories of that night are wiped after she brands Bod a monster for the way he beat the killer, and she and her mother are nudged into moving away.
Q 30In The Graveyard Book, what does Mrs. Owens begin on Bod's first night but finish only as he leaves?
A lullaby
A lullaby from her own childhood: on his first night she cannot recall how it ends, and the last line comes back to her only at the gates.