Coraline

I absolutely adored the movie Coraline when it came out and had never realised that it was based on a book by Neil Gaiman. 

I love Neil Gaiman’s way of writing and telling stories, and Coraline is no different. I think that the movie did the book justice, and brought to life Neil’s vision. The illustrations from Chris Riddell make the book all the more interesting, as he brings to life different characters in the book so well at the start of each chapter. 

We meet Coraline as she gets more and more bored through the school holidays. She has no one to play with and her parents are both busy working in their offices in the house and want her to entertain herself. She explores outside and goes to sit with her neighbours downstairs, two old women called Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, and speaks to the strange man upstairs who says he is training mice. 

Coraline finds a door in one of the rooms of the flat that is locked and she doesn’t know where it goes to. When her mother unlocks it, there is just a brick wall behind it. Later on, while everyone is in bed asleep, Coraline hears a noise and discovers that the door that they shut earlier no longer has bricks behind it, but a dark corridor. When Coraline goes down the corridor she ends up in what looks like her flat, with her mother and father in the kitchen. But they have one major difference… they have black buttons for eyes. Coraline must find a way back home to her own parents and away from the other mother who wants to keep Coraline forever. 

This book is just the right amount of creepy for a child’s story (it was written for Neil’s daughters) while still having a lovely message reinforced - when you’re scared of something but still do it, that’s bravery. I think this is a lovely message to instil in people and may help people to face their fears if they remember the message. 

Another brilliant book from Neil Gaiman, and another lovely book with Chris Riddell’s illustrations to add to my collection.