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Book Summary

Reviewed by Matt Berman

In Coraline's new house, she discovers a door that sometimes opens onto a brick wall and sometimes doesn't. Venturing through, she discovers a world that mirrors her own, though the mirror is disturbingly distorted. There's more fun and better food, but her parents and neighbors are reflected with troubling differences. Returning to her own home, Coraline 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.

Is It Any Good?

3

Author Neil 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.

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