The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring....
In Coraline's family's new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close.
The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own.
Only it's different.
At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter their teeth. But there's another mother, and another father, and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go.
Other children are trapped there as well, lost souls behind the mirrors. Coraline is their only hope of rescue. She will have to fight with all her wits and all the tools she can find if she is to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself.
Critically acclaimed and award-winning author Neil Gaiman will delight readers with his first novel for all ages.
A note from Neil Gaiman about Coraline "More then ten years ago I started to write a children’s book. It was for my daughter, Holly, who was five years old. I wanted it to have a girl as a heroine, and I wanted it to be refreshingly creepy. I started to write a story about a girl named Coraline. I thought that the story would be five or ten pages long. The story itself had other plans.... It was a story, I learned when people began to read it, that children experienced as an adventure, but which gave adults nightmares. It's the strangest book I've written, it took the longest time to write, and it's the book I'm proudest of."
BOOK REVIEWS
BookBrowse
Gaiman has crafted a superbly creepy and surreal fairy tale which will appeal to robust children from about age 9, and most children aged 11 and up. For younger children, new to the horror genre, the story may seem a little slow at the beginning as there is little tangible 'action' and the subtlety of the building tension might pass them by, but if they make it through the first few chapters they're likely to be hooked! Particularly recommended is the audio version read by Gaiman in a well paced, somewhat sinister voice which is enhanced by music and effects from the Gothic Arches who have also been featured on the audio versions of the Lemony Snicket books 'A Series of Unfortunate Events'.
Media Reviews
Booklist - Stephanie Zvirin
Gr. 5-8. ...an often-compelling horror novel, but, as with so many adult authors who attempt to reach young readers, his grasp of his audience is less sure than his command of his material.
School Library Journal - Bruce Anne Shock
The story is odd, strange, even slightly bizarre, but kids will hang on every word. Coraline is a character with whom they will surely identify, and they will love being frightened out of their shoes. This is just right for all those requests for a scary book. Grades 6-8.
Publishers Weekly
.... an electrifyingly creepy tale likely to haunt young readers for many moons.... a real bedtime-buster. Ages 8-up.
Kirkus Reviews
Starred Review. A magnificently creepy fantasy.... Not for the faint-hearted--who are mostly adults anyway--but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister Coraline is spot on.
Washington Post Book World
Gaiman’s tale is inventive, scary, thrilling and finally affirmative. Readers young and old will find something to startle them.
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
By turns creepy and funny, bittersweet and playful…can be read quickly and enjoyed deeply.
Children's Literature - Joan Kindig
... a good edge-of-your-seat read without being terribly frightening. For those children who like to be scared, Gaiman's novel is a well-written alternative to Goosebumps.
New York Times Book Review
A modern ghost story with all the creepy trimmings…Well done.
Times Educational Supplement
As we used to say, it blew my mind…chilly, finely-wrought prose, a truly weird setting and a fable that taps into our most uncomfortable fears.
Philip Pullman
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, rise to your feet and applaud Coraline is the real thing.
Orson Scott Card
A deliciously scary book that we loved reading together as a family.
Diana Wynne Jones
The most splendidly original, weird, and frightening book I have read, and yet full of things children will love.
Terry Pratchett
It has the delicate horror of the finest fairy tales, and it is a masterpiece.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Micky Coraline: A Psychological Horror I read this book when I was 11 and found it incredibly disturbing. I cried myself to sleep one night I was so frightened. At first the book seemed dull and lifeless. But something that was incorporated well throughout the entire book was the sense... Read More
Rated of 5
by Milly Curd Fantastic Coraline was a brilliant book. The genres in the book are Detective, mystery, horror, adventure,fantasy and much more. Coraline inspired me to think big like the characters in the story. Neil Gaiman is a fantastic writer which will be read for... Read More
War, natural disaster, reckless gods and the recognition of impermanence in the world are just some of the threads that AS Byatt weaves into this most timely of books. Linguistically stunning and imaginatively abundant, this is a landmark.
A beguiling, imaginative, inspiring story about the bigness of being alive as an individual, as a member of a tribe, and as a participant in history, exploring how we use storytelling to survive and shape our own truths.
Brilliantly evoking the long-vanished world of masters and servants, Margaret Powell's classic memoir of her time in service is the remarkable true story of an indomitable woman who, though she served in the great houses of England, never stopped aiming high.
Vivid, daring, and unforgettable, The Printmaker's Daughter shines fresh light on art, loyalty, and the tender and indelible bond between a father and daughter.
I read The Healing in two sittings it is a fascinating story of plantation life at the beginning of the Civil War. Granada, a slave newborn child...
read more
The Uncommon Reader is a novella by novelist and playwright, Alan Bennett. The story starts with the Queen coming across the mobile library van...
read more
Arizona bills Amazon for $53 million in uncollected sales tax(Feb 06 2012) The ongoing sales tax battle between many US states and large online retailers, most notably Amazon, continues with a thrust from Arizona which, last week,...
Full Story
Amazon rumored to be opening bricks and mortar stores(Feb 03 2012) There are mumblings in the blogosphere that Amazon is to open bricks and mortar stores. Launch.it offers four possible scenarios:
Booklist - Stephanie Zvirin
Philip Pullman
of 5
by Micky
RSS feed
