Coraline

by Neil Gaiman

Dave McKean (Illustrator)

When Coraline moves with her parents to a new house she is fascinated by the fact that their 'house' is in fact only half a house! Divided into flats years before, there is a brick wall behind a door where once there was a corridor and one day it is corridor again, down which the intrepid Coraline wanders. And so a nightmare-ish mystery begins that takes Coraline into the arms of counterfeit parents and a life that isn't quite right. Can Coraline get out? Can she find her real parents? Will life ever be the same again? "I think this book will nudge "Alice In Wonderland" out of its niche at last. It is the most splendidly original, weird, and frightening book I have read, and yet full of things children will love." - Diana Wynne Jones. "This book will send a shiver down your spine, out through your shoes and into a taxi to the airport. It has the delicate horror of the finest fairy tales, and it is a masterpiece. And you will never think about buttons in quite the same way again." - Terry Pratchett.

• ISBN10: 0061649694
• ISBN13: 9780061649691
• Publish Date: 28 October 2008 (first published 1 January 2002)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 13 March 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: HarperCollins Publishers
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 162
• Language: English

Reviews

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

I am thoroughly grateful that Coraline was not released until 2002. In 2002, I was 13. At 13, I was too old to have my parents reading me stories in bed. And that is a blessing because I was an easily frightened child and my father was an excellent storyteller. Coraline would have given me nightmares.

It's not an overly scary book, but the Other Mother is very much like the boogeyman. If you're naughty, she'll take your parents and want to sew her buttons on your eyes. The creepy scenes are written with the greatest craft and skill. Coraline is endearing, while also being a ghost story.

As an adult, I don't think I appreciated Coraline as much as many others, especially those whose grew up with it. But it's still a fun book and I do appreciate Neil Gaiman's children's stories. :)

[leahrosereads]

This was a re-read, but since I don't remember when I first read it, and I didn't write a review the first time around, I guess I'm starting from scratch.

And that's OK, because this edition with illustrations by Chris Riddell added so much to the story. I honestly wish I had read this, listened to the audiobook, and had these illustrations all at the same time. It would have been fantastic. 2/3 of those ain't bad though.

As someone who watched the movie before ever reading the book, I have to say, I still prefer this. There are elements of the movie that I absolutely love, but Neil's words just add something special that visuals can't compete with. Makes sense since this is his story.

Coraline is a character that I genuinely aspire to be like. She's brave and curious and inventive and just such a wonderful role model for youngins' and old'ns alike.

And of course, my other favorite character is the showstealer - the cat. It's such a marvelous cat character. It oozes cat every time it's on the pages. I love it.

What makes this story work so well, in my mind, are not only the well written protagonists, but the true evilness of the villain, Other Mother. She's creepy and crawly and she gets under my skin. She's horror and nightmares and the illustrations of her in this makes me want to re-watch the movie and soon!

Still very much in love with this story, and I cannot wait to share Coraline with my nieces and nephews so that they know what it means to be brave.

[cornerfolds]

Read more of my reviews at Cornerfolds.com!

Let me start by saying this: if the blurb on the book cover calls it "One of the most frightening books ever written," I expect to be shaking in my boots. Now, I get that Coraline is a children's book, but I have seen this on so many "best of" horror lists that I just had to give it a try during the Halloween season! It's worth pointing out that this was also my first Gaiman book so I didn't really know what I was getting into, although I know his reputation.

Coraline is about a girl who lives in a really weird house with another really weird house on the other side of a bricked up door. Coraline was a fun character, if a little, um... weird. The real fun starts when she does exactly what she should not do by visiting the other side of the door in the room she isn't supposed to be in to begin with. There lives her other mother and other father, a couple super unnerving folks who want her to forget about her real parents and stay with them forever. Coraline meets other characters including a talking cat and a bunch of singing rats who help her on the way to get back to her world.

I really did want to know more about the other mother. While she was a super creepy villain, I never felt like I really understood who she was or why she was evil to begin with. All villains have some kind of backstory, but not the other mother. Why is she living on the other side of the bricked up door and what is her purpose? Maybe I just totally missed that.

Honestly, this is just a really weird book. The world building is spectacular, though! Neil Gaiman really knows how to create a world that's unique and creepy right from the first page. The characters are all intriguing even though we never get to know them super well. What this book is not, however, is horror. I see now on Goodreads that the first genre listed is fantasy and that is much more accurate.

One thing I did really enjoy about this book was that Neil Gaiman himself performed the audio. I always wonder when listening to audiobooks if the author actually intended the characters to be presented in the way the narrators are interpreting them. The audio here portrays the strange, whimsical feelings that Gaiman obviously wanted to get across to the reader and it was awesome.

I enjoyed Coraline for what it was - a creepy children's book. I liked the characters and thought the villain was pretty great! I also really liked the world and the cat. I just expected more from a book that's blurbed as one of the most frightening ever written. I feel like there's a bit of nostalgia that goes along with Coraline and if I had read it when I was younger perhaps I could have appreciated it more. As it stands, I did like it, but really hoped for something a bit more scary!

Actual rating: 3.5 stars

[chrssym]

A wonderful story

[celinenyx]

Don't tell anyone, but I'm not a Neil Gaiman fan. He is so universally loved, but I tried several times to get into Neverwhere and completely failed. It just didn't capture me, it was too weird, vague, I don't know. Since my library had Coraline as an ebook and I wanted to try their ebook subscription service, I just kinda went with it, not expecting much from it.

Coraline has a pretty standard children's book format. Girl finds door that leads to nowhere, but wait *gasp* it does lead somewhere. This somewhere is a nightmarish place that resembles their house only it's fundamentally more disturbing. The story is quite creepy and the imagery stays with you when you're finished.

I'm still not sold on Gaiman's writing, but Coraline did provide an entertainingly creepy hour or two.

[Nessa Luna]

Just like with Percy Jackson, I had watched the movie (which is one of my favourite movies ever) before I started reading the book. (To be honest, I had no idea there was a book, until I accidentally found it on here when I was randomly typing in movie names, because I wanted to see which ones had been based on books).

And just like with PJ, the movie was quite different from the book, of course. The thing that bothered me the most, was that in the movie, Coraline had a 'friend', Wyborne (whose grandmother owned the 'pink house' as they called it int he movie) and in the books, he wasn't there.

I did like the fact that, in the book, all animals (the rats, and the dogs) could talk in the other world, not just the cat.

But still, the book was really nice, and I am going to try to read more books that have been made into movies. Though I'll probably get annoyed if there's a huge difference between the book and the movie, but I think I'm not the only one. (Allthough I quite understand that they've left a lot out of this movie, since it's a stopmotion movie, which takes really long to make, I believe).

[Jyc]

★★★★ // the Other Mother still gives me nightmares.

[Jack]

I watched the movie before reading the book. The movie was extremely creepy and even a bit scary. I felt there was some moral that the movie and book are trying to say, but what that is I can't quite figure it out. This book will stay in my memory for a long time.

But I didn't find the book nearly as creepy. Maybe because I spoiled myself by watching the movie first. I still loved the book, it brought out extra bit of creepiness that the movie couldn't ss how you.