Review: Coraline

Book: Coraline
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: HarperTrophy
Release Date: August 4th, 2002
Pages: 162
Source: Goodreads
Date Read: June 10th, 2010

Summary:

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.

Sarah's Analysis: 
Anyone who has ever picked up Coraline at a bookstore probably ended up buying the book after reading the first page. Coraline is so engrossing you could read it in one sitting and fall asleep trembling with fear.

Coraline is about a young girl, with like name, who wants her life to be less boring. After moving into her new home, Coraline discovers a small door that leads to a parallel world. The world is similar to hers, with copies of people she knows living in it, but different because everything seems better. There she meets the "other mother", who seems to be the perfect mother to Coraline. The other mother gives Coraline everything she ever wanted; amazing food, great clothes, the perfect family, and the promise that every day Coraline spends in the other world will be filled with exciting new adventures. The world appears to be paradise for Coraline.

But if she wants to stay, she must allow the other parents to sew buttons in place of her eyes. And she has to promise to stay with them... forever.

Neil Gaiman's Coraline is truly brilliant. It has always been said that good books provoke emotions; happiness, sadness, and fear. Coraline has mastered the "fear" better than any book I have ever read. It's an easy read, but one where your palms sweat at the turn of each page. It's incredibly captivating and wonderfully disturbing. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute I spent reading Coraline.

Ratings:


Plot: 5/5
Writing Style: 5/5
Uniqueness: 5/5
Characters: 5/5

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• Abarat by Clive Barker
  
• City Of the Beasts by Isabel Allende
  

Memorable Quotes:

"I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted just like that, and it didn't mean anything. What then?"

"Because, when you're scared but you still do it anyway, that's brave."