REVIEW: ‘Coraline’ Written by Neil Gaiman and Illustrated by Dave McKean

Cora­line, writ­ten by Neil Gaiman and illus­trated by Dave McK­ean, tells the story of a young girl who bravely saves her­self and her par­ents from the ghosts that inhabit their home.

Cora­line Jones and her par­ents stay in a divided up flat. The flat below them is occu­pied by Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, for­mer the­atre actresses who live with their High­land ter­ri­ers and the upstairs apart­ment is occu­pied by “a crazy old man with a moustache.”

Cora­line starts off with the rou­tine of a young girl who is bored. Her par­ents seem to be pre­oc­cu­pied with their own life and not spar­ing too much time to their only daugh­ter. Cora­line has learned to enter­tain her­self and loves to go “explor­ing” on her own around the prop­erty of her flat. On a rainy, dreary day, she is bored and goes in search of some­thing to do and comes across a black key. The key opens a secret door in the draw­ing room, that reveals a brick wall.

One day that brick wall dis­ap­pears and a cor­ri­dor emerges. Cora­line goes through this cor­ri­dor and finds a house that looks like her own house but it isn’t her house. She finds her­self in this “other house” with two peo­ple who seem to resem­ble her par­ents, but their not her par­ents. Except for their eerie resem­blance to her par­ents, her “other par­ents” have black but­tons for eyes and appear ghost-like and pale in appear­ance. They seem nice enough, even wel­com­ing, but they want Cora­line to stay with them “for­ever and always.”

Miss Forcible and Miss Spink tell Cora­line that she is in grave dan­ger and hand her a stone with a hole in it for pro­tec­tion. Sure enough, Cora­line becomes trapped on the other side of the cor­ri­dor with her “other par­ents” with no way back to her own world. It is up Cora­line to save her­self and her real par­ents (who have dis­ap­peared) and the three ghost-children whose soul’s were stolen from them. Coraline’s accom­plice in this world is a big black cat who mys­te­ri­ously shows up to give her a help­ing hand from time to time.

The “other mother” with her black but­ton for eyes with claw like fin­gers and whose great height is described as hav­ing her head touch the ceil­ing, seems nice enough but when she real­izes that Cora­line wants noth­ing to do with her or her world, things go down­hill fast. The “other mother” becomes mean and deter­mined to keep Cora­line against her will. Ulti­mately, Cora­line finds her­self match­ing wits with this crea­ture, what­ever she is, in order to return to her world unscathed.

Read­ing the first cou­ple of chap­ters, I was like: where is the scary stuff already? Sure enough it showed up in all it’s glory. It takes a lot to scare me but Gaiman has a great way of describ­ing things: the black, unblink­ing black hole for eyes, the long, tapered claw like hands, the mil­lion lit­tle tiny red eyes star­ing back at you. The atmos­phere in here was creepy and this is a children’s book!

I enjoy sto­ries where ordi­nary peo­ple are seen over­com­ing the odds. This story reminded me of the ani­mated film, Spir­ited Away, about another young girl fac­ing down the odds. I love that movie but these are dif­fer­ent sto­ries but they have the same themes. The end result from such an expe­ri­ence for these kids is that it builds up one’s char­ac­ter, strength, courage and self-esteem. They end up real­iz­ing that their life isn’t so bad after all.

When faced with life and death sit­u­a­tions, every­thing else in life seems easy in com­par­i­son and your prob­lems are minus­cule. I enjoyed Cora­line and would grade the book a B. I like the mes­sage of this book in that it takes a lot of courage to be brave. I admit to being gripped some­where in the mid­dle of this book and unable to put it down towards the end. But still, it’s a B. Why?

I can’t quite put my fin­ger on it, as I wasn’t quite as in love with this story as the oth­ers seem to be but it’s still a good story even for adults. I guess if I had to sep­a­rate Gaiman’s cre­ativ­ity from his writ­ing style/voice, it would be an A and a B, respec­tively. My dis­likes are not worth men­tion­ing as they tend to be more per­sonal. Any­way, this story will make a great movie. Also, I bought the ebook and since this story is illus­trated, the pic­tures ren­dered well on my ebook reader.

For Fur­ther Reading

• What­ever Hap­pened to the Caped Cru­sader? by Neil Gaiman, Andy Kubert
• Mon­day News
• REVIEW: ‘The Dream­ing’ Writ­ten & Illus­trated by Quee­nie Chan
• REVIEW: ‘The Grave­yard Book’ Writ­ten by Neil Gaiman and Illus­trated by Dave McKean
• Neil Gaiman’s ‘Grave­yard’ Tells The Story of a Boy Raised By the Dead
• REVIEW: The Spi­der­wick Chron­i­cles writ­ten by Holly Black and Illus­trated by Tony DiTerlizzi
• REVIEW: Beware of Spi­rals: Uzu­maki, Junji Ito
• The Devil’s Rose: An Illus­trated Novel by Brom
• REVIEW: The Eter­nals by Neil Gaiman, Illust. by John Romita Jr
• REVIEW: Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz

Tagged as: Ghosts, Horror, Neil Gaiman, secret doors, Young Readers