The Graveyard Book wins a Newbery, and interesting werewolf lore...

Posting this a little late, but congratulations to Neil Gaiman for winning this year's Newbery Medal (an award for the year's best children's book) for The Graveyard Book! If you read the above link to his blog, you'll find that he's so humble that it's cute: he gets called at 5:45 in the morning by the chair of the Newbery Committee, and he thinks, "Oh. Newbery. Right. Cool. I may be an honors book or something." ^__^ No, Neil, you are not the runner-up--you are the winner, and you bloody well deserve it! It's fantastic book--very humorous and compelling, and I love it that a children's book dares to start off with an entire family being murdered (except for the baby, who becomes the protagonist of the book)! And yet, it's not at all depressing--Bod has a very loving, if rather unusual, surrogate family in the ghosts (and one vampire) who take care of him in the graveyard where he has taken refuge, and he's a very happy and curious child. See also my original rec for the book.

Also, there was an interesting little gem about werewolves that Neil created in his book; warning: contains SPOILERS!
( Cut for spoilers... )