Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

So it appears we're going out of order on the series, but Gathering Blue is the second installment in the world begun with The Giver. While readers follow Kira as she struggles in a cruel world with a twisted leg, and her few friends (Matt is one of them, whom The Messenger follows). This book begins with Kira watching her mother's spirit slowly leave her body after death in the dying fields, and return to a burned home with a mean-spirited woman trying to take the land away from her and have her sentenced to death for being disabled. Readers will enjoy watching Kira grow into a woman in a few short months, and find the courage to change the world.

What I liked most about this book is the new perspective. With Jonas and Matty both we enter into the world of adolescent boys. Kira has both a woman's perspective, and challenges that both boys and girls can relate to. The girl's perspective is well balanced by her friends, Matt (a one syllable tyke who's always getting into mischief), and Thomas (another orphan who is an extraordinary "artist") who give a voice to the "world of men" as seen from the eyes of boys in Lowry's furturistic vision.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Nobody Owens is raised in a graveyard by his ghostly parents, and caretaker, after his “first family” dies in a terrible tragedy. But Bod, as he’s called, shows us that it really takes a graveyard to raise a boy.

Follow this boys adventures from young child learning how to Fade, learning to read from grave stones, and history lessons from those who were actually there. But everyone must grow up some day.

What I loved most about this book was the different perspective I saw of how life after death can be, and how the living can and can't interact with the dead. Neil Gaiman has done it again!