What is Neil Gaiman's "enormous debt" to The Jungle Book that he mentions in the acknowledgments in The Graveyard Book?

Question

The acknowledgments in The Graveyard Book mention an "enormous debt" to Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. What does Gaiman mean by this?

Answer 1

The entire book is sort of a re-telling of The Jungle Book (hence the analogous name, The Graveyard Book) as a gothic urban fantasy.

From the very beginning, when Bod is brutally separated from his family and has to get acceptance from a council in order to be fostered/adopted into a new living arrangement, it follows the general outline of The Jungle Book. There is a silky, smooth teacher and also a furry, rougher teacher, there are many mini-vignettes (such as the kidnapping — and means of escape — on the way to Ghûlheim) that model corresponding scenes in The Jungle Book, and also entities like the Sleer that have a clear analog in the original.

Once a reader has cottoned on, it's quite enjoyable to read the two and compare them, to see Gaiman's rendition of/homage to what he clearly respects as a masterwork.