Common Sense Note
The story is pretty creepy -- not for sensitive children. But it's a good choice for kids who want horror and whose parents would prefer it be well-written and not too gruesome.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Matt Berman
Author Gaiman is well known in the world of adult literature, but this is his first book for children. It's a strange, surrealistic tale, fun for kids who like their stories creepy. The black and white illustrations by Dave McKean are correspondingly sinister. But it lacks the emotional heart that marks the best children's books.
Not everything makes sense here, and Coraline is not a character to bring out readers' empathy. But the atmosphere is mildly scary, and the story rolls along fairly unpredictably. It's not an awe-inspiring debut in the children's book world, but it's enjoyable enough.
From the Book:
Expecting it to be a toffee or a butterscotch ball, Coraline looked down. The bag was half filled with large shiny blackbeetles, crawling over each other in their efforts to get out of the bag.
"No," said Coraline. "I don't want one."
"Suit yourself," said her other mother. She carefully picked out a particularly large and black beetle, picked off its legs (which she dropped, neatly, into a big glass ashtray on the small table beside the sofa), and popped the beetle into her mouth. She crunched it happily.
Plot Summary:
In Coraline's new house she discovers a door in the attic that sometimes opens onto a brick wall, and sometimes doesn't. Venturing through the doorway she discovers a world that mirrors her own, though the mirror is disturbingly distorted. There is more fun and better food there though, and her parents and neighbors are reflected there too, but with troubling differences.
Returning to her own home she finds that her real parents are missing, only appearing in the hallway mirror. With the help of a cat that can talk in the mirror world, Coraline returns to rescue her parents, as well as the souls of other children that she finds imprisoned there, from the fiendish Other Mother.
Related Books:
Graduate from R. L. Stine: High-Quality Horror for Middle Graders
A Fit of Shivers by Joan Aiken
The Velvet Room by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
All on a Winter's Day by Lisa Taylor
The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral by Robert Westall
Mindquakes: Stories to Shatter Your Brain by Neal Shusterman
A Nightmare?s Dozen: Stories from the Dark by Michael Stearns, ed.
Clockwork, or All Wound Up by Philip Pullman
Never Trust a Dead Man by Vivian Vande Velde
The Thief of Always by Clive Barker
Full Tilt by Neal Shusterman
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ViolenceA rat is decapitated by a cat. Coraline is chased by weird creatures. Intentionally scary, but not terrifying. Lots of rats, spiders, clammy rooms, mysterious threatening beings, and other typical haunted house elements. |
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