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Product Details
Age Range: 8 - 12 years
Grade Level: 3 and up
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins; 10 Rep Anv edition (April 24, 2012)
Format: Kindle Edition with Audio/Video
Verified Purchase
Short and Sweet: Even if you don't like horror, pick up this beautifully written children's book about bravery, boredom, and getting everything you want. Turns out, getting everything you want isn't as great as you'd think.
Coraline is horror light. All the creepy richness of a regular horror novel but with a light, happy ending instead. In all honesty, this book was the max amount of horror I could handle. The horror parts of the novel involved things like going in dark basements and you KNOW something is down there. There were gross parts involving bats and moving spider-egg-sac-things. Does she have to touch it? OH YES SHE DOES. The thing she needs is inside it (of course). This story is about bravery, which I obviously do not possess. I would not do any of the things Coraline did, especially touch the creepy egg-sac-thingy. As Neil Gaiman puts it, Coraline has "scared many adults and fewer children." (Coraline 10th Anniversary Edition, Q&A with Neil Gaiman)
There's also a general feeling of something being off, something not quite right. I think it's mostly from his word choice when he uses similes. And they are gross.
The flat had walls the color of old milk.
- Neil Gaiman, Coraline 10th Anniversary Edition (p. 129)
There was a tiny doubt inside her, like a maggot in an apple core.
- Neil Gaiman, Coraline 10th Anniversary Edition (p. 75)
Why use "off-white" when "old milk" induces dry heaving?
The thing about Neil Gaiman is that he really nails childhood. He gets how kids work and how they think.
Picked up again and published in 2002 after having been put on hold 10 years earlier, we are presented with ‘Coraline’, the title of the accidently misspelled Caroline and subsequently kept name by Neil Gaiman. The major motif behind the work is bravery, being boot-shakingly scared yet pushing forward in efforts to do the right thing.
A work Gaiman started and completed for his two daughters (as he says: started for one; finished for another). This is a dark fairy tale of two separate worlds, two alternate realities, where things are similar but wholly dissimilar. It is fantastical and slightly scary (I don’t know how his girls did with it, but assuming that Gaiman is their father – they’re probably used to the stuff!) Reading this as an adult I found there to be aspects that gave me the shudders! And while I’ve also watched the movie, many years ago and prior to reading the work, I have little recollection of how closely the movie follows the literary work (I’ll probably watch it later on, to refresh myself), thus the written work appears fresh and vibrant, if not a bit terse. That said, for what it is, it is a fantastic tale of persevering in the face of fear, uncertainty and unfamiliarity. An easy 4 stars; borderline 5.
‘Because,’ she said, ‘when you’re scared but you still do it anyway, that’s brave.’ (651)
SPOILERS:
Having recently relocated to a new home, Coraline Jones is sent exploring by her parents, whom seem to have very little time for her. She ultimately ends up asking to spend time in the ‘drawing room’ where there is a bricked off door which used to allow access to the remainder of the house before it had been partitioned. While Coraline’s mother says the door goes nowhere, this is soon disproven.Read more ›
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Little Coraline is terribly bored, but that won't stop her from stumbling into adventure--even in the haunts of her very own flat. Neil Gaiman has constructed a wonderful modern-day fairy tale. Who cannot relate to being bored on a rainy day as a child, and wandering around looking for something to do?
As this author likes to do, he paints an intriguing tale using both the strange and the familiar. Perhaps inspired by his own childhood reading the Narnia Chronicles and Alice in Wonderland, Coraline enters a strange world through a doorway to nowhere inside her home. The protagonist lives in an old mansion that was divided up into four flats. As part of the division, a doorway was bricked up but otherwise left intact. Two of the other flats are inhabited by curious adults who have interesting backgrounds and peculiar interests. But no other children. The fourth flat is vacant and this leaves Coraline wondering what it's like over in the vacant flat.
One day, she opens the odd door (that is usually full of bricks) and discovers a passageway to the "Other" world. Here she discovers her "Other" family who purport to be having a much more interesting and exciting life on this side of the flat. Coraline also meets her "other" neighbors who are even more intriguing and crazier versions of themselves than in the real world. However, there is also a hint that something is a little off, despite the seemingly gracious attitude of the inhabitants of the Other world. For one, they have buttons for eyes! Coraline is a clever girl and keeps her guard up refusing an invitation to stay in this Other world, but she's ultimately drawn back when her loved ones are kidnapped and imprisoned there. This story has all the "wonder" of Wonderland.Read more ›
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