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Coraline 10th Anniversary Edition
Coraline 10th Anniversary Edition
Coraline 10th Anniversary Edition
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Coraline 10th Anniversary Edition

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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About this ebook

This edition of New York Times bestselling and Newbery Medal-winning author Neil Gaiman’s modern classic, Coraline—also an Academy Award-nominated film—is enriched with a foreword from the author, a reader's guide, and more.

"Coraline discovered the door a little while after they moved into the house...."

When Coraline steps through a door to find another house strangely similar to her own (only better), things seem marvelous.

But there's another mother there, and another father, and they want her to stay and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go.

Coraline will have to fight with all her wit and courage if she is to save herself and return to her ordinary life.

Neil Gaiman's Coraline is a can't-miss classic that enthralls readers age 8 to 12 but also adults who enjoy a perfect smart spooky read.

Editor's Note

Delightfully dark…

Delightfully dark, Neil Gaiman’s tale of the curious, brave, and clever Coraline is sinister and suspenseful, yet filled with quirky charm. With the author’s own narration of his novella, the unforgettable Coraline comes to vivid life.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateApr 24, 2012
ISBN9780062205728
Coraline 10th Anniversary Edition
Author

Neil Gaiman

NEIL GAIMAN was awarded the Newbery and Carnegie Medals for The Graveyard Book. His other books for younger readers include Coraline (which was made into an Academy-Award-nominated film) and The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish (which wasn’t). Born in England, he has won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. You can learn more at www.mousecircus.com.

Read more from Neil Gaiman

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Rating: 4.222879684418146 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Easy and quick read. Short story. A fun, and dark children literature.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I know this is written for children, but even knowing that, this book was still just too fantastical and yet flat at the same time. However, both of my granddaughters love it. (Ages 8 and 12) There are parallel worlds that collide and Coraline must work to get her "real" parents back. 208 pages
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Very creepy!!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is terrifying. The uncanny haunts every pages, making you question not only Coraline's world, but your own world. It's scary yet enjoyable by those old and young alike. It would be a great book to read with a young one who's entering their spooky phase and likes Halloween and all things ghostly because there's nothing too overtly terrifying in it--- in fact, I think it might be more scary for the adults than the kids! A great adventure story with a wonderful young protagonist.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Just the right mix of charming and creepy.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I bought this for my sister a while ago, and always meant to read it, but in the end I ended up reading it on the HarperCollins site, when they put it up as a free browse inside thing. It's up right now as I write this, but I don't know how long for. It is/was here, though.

    Coraline is, I think, aimed at the youngest audience of all Gaiman's books that I've read. That doesn't stop it being slightly creepy, slightly weird, and full of trademark Neil Gaiman observations about things. I loved all the little comments about parents being dumb -- when you're little, parents are, aren't they? It's not often a child knows better, but sometimes they do. I'm still right with Coraline in thinking it's ridiculous to buy something huge in the hopes the kid'll grow into it someday. That's just tempting fate (as proved by me being a mere 5'3", after all my parents' hopes of me being very tall!).

    Coraline's pretty short and easy to read, and wasn't even too bad to read on the screen like that. I wish there was more of it, in a sense, since I pretty much swallowed it down in one gulp, but on the other hand, it's just right as it is. It reminded me a little of MirrorMask.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Being able to watch the movie gave me much desire to read this because the movie was phenomenal for me! The movie was really good. :D I was able to watch the movie first before I got the chance to read this so I was able to skip the part of being all creeped out with the whole story. But the book is really good too. Perhaps, should I have been able to read this when I was much younger, this might have been part of my best list. But being an “eccentric-bizarre” fan myself, Neil Gaiman still never disappointed me with my “odd” whims.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I began Coraline one night on my train-ride home from the city, and found myself immediately sucked into the story. My only prior exposure to Gaiman's work had been through the first installment of his Sandman comic-book series, which I thought mediocre at best, so I approached his children's novel with some ambivalence. I was surprised and pleased to discover that I enjoyed Gaiman's prose, and appreciated his perceptive depiction of the child's-eye view of the world around her. The general obliviousness of adults to the realities and concerns of childhood, is a theme often explored in juvenile literature, and one Gaiman incorporates very ably into the opening of his book. Not only are Coraline's parents distant, and frequently unavailable, but the other adults around her seem to have trouble processing the reality of her existence. All of her new neighbors, from Miss Spink and Miss Forcible downstairs, to strange Mr. Bobo upstairs, have trouble remembering her name, and repeatedly refer to her as "Caroline." One gets the sense that they are simply incorporating her into a pre-existing narrative, without really seeing her at all: "Coraline wondered why so few of the adults she had met made any sense. She sometimes wondered who they thought they were talking to"(20).The fact that the "other" neighbors, created by the "other mother" in the strange mirror-world Coraline wanders into one day, all manage to get her name right, is a testament to the beldam's focus on Coraline - her determination to keep her. But by the end of the novel, Coraline's real neighbors know who she is, and what to call her - an indication perhaps, of her growth as a character, her newfound strength and self-assurance. There are many echoes here, from the alternate world, which (as Diana Wynne Jones notes on the back cover) reminds one a bit of Alice in Wonderland, to Coraline's boredom-inspired exploring, so reminiscent of the Pevensie children in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But for all these parallels, Coraline is also a very distinctive book. I have heard it said that adult readers find Coraline frightening and horrific, whereas child readers take it in stride. For my part, I was neither scared, nor especially mystified, and guessed the location of Coraline's parents from the beginning. But I did care - about Coraline, about her parents, about the (brilliant) nameless cat - and that's no small achievement for a brief, 162-page novel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is one dark, spooky book. It is not for little kids. Subtle and definitely worth reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    If I was a child, this would be a great adventure story - as an adult, it's pretty darn creepy! I am a huge Gaiman fan, so it's no surprise that I liked this one. The parallel universe he creates here is plausible enough to give you nightmares and the main character flawed and brave enough to make you root for her all the way. Although the "other" world on the other side of a door could make you think of Narnia, don't even go there - this is far more menacing than anything C.S. Lewis would write.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Coraline is an awesome book about a girl who goes through a door to another world. She meets a monster that pretends to be her other mother, but she wants to keep Coraline there forever and replace her eyes with buttons.I think the author's intent to encourage bravery because Coraline talks to herself about bravery. Coraline shows bravery by throwing a cat at a monster and sticking her hand into a spiderweb.Another author's intent may be to tell readers to be happy with the family that they have because at least it's better than having monsters as a family.I highly recommend this book to Goth people and people who like scary books. I usually don't like scary books but I liked this one because it was suspenseful.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Delightfully creepy without being too scary. It would have been too much for me as a child, but children who like creepy tales should enjoy it. Gaiman does a good job of seeing the world from a child's point of view.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I love Gaiman's books, and this is one of my favorites. He really knows how to do creepy. The button eyes still freak me out.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    All Coraline could do was explore her new house, it was an old house but they had just moved in and she wanted to know what everything was and where every door went. Finding a brick wall behind the door in one of the rooms just made her more curious. Looking behind the door a second time, Coraline found a long hall and since she was exploring, she followed it to another house that looked a lot like her own. She also found another mother and another father, another set of neighbors (the Misses Spink & Forcible and the man upstairs), they were almost like the real ones, but not quite. The problem came when Coraline wanted to return home to her real mother and father, the other mother didn’t want her to go. Coraline needed a plan to get out and to find her real parents.****4 The darker side of fairy tales as only Neil Gaiman can do. Interesting twist on the other world leaving one almost hoping they don’t find a portal to a parallel universe. The vision of the dark halls, the misty surrounding and the creepiness of the other mother was well written, easily imagined and slightly disturbing. In other words, well written and I am more eager now to see the movie that is based on this book than I was before. The book was different than what I had been expecting based on the Movie promotions.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Children's fantasy is such a wonderful genre to read, and "Coraline" has more than successfully reminded me of just how much I enjoy it. This is the dark tale of Coraline, a young girl who spends her days exploring the new premises of the flat that she and her parents have moved into. That is, unless it's raining, in which case she has nothing to do except bother her parents, who are always busy. One day, Coraline goes through a mysterious passageway that leads to an apartment very much like her own, with an "other mother" and "other father." Her life there is almost the same as her other life, but not quite. Her other mother dotes on her and, rather than being too busy to pay her any attention, practically begs her to stay. But Coraline soon comes to suspect that her other mother has stolen away her real parents, and is trying to imprison her in a shifting world of illusions and emptiness. With the help of a talking cat and a stone with a hole in it, Coraline must find a way to free her parents - and herself.I just absolutely loved "Coraline," much more than I was expecting to. I read it in one sitting, unable to take my eyes off the pages, even when my tea ran out (I never read without some hot tea by my side). Gaiman's writing style is concise and quick - descriptions are kept to a minimum, what details the reader is given are written factually, and rather than tell us what is what (example, that Coraline is frightened, or that eating beetles is gross), he simply leaves us to assume this for ourselves. For this particular story, it works well. It made the book easy to read but also opened up the gateway to illustrating it with imagination, which all children's books should rely on at least a little bit, in my opinion. Coraline's feelings and motives are universal ones that will be easy for children to understand and relate to - the need for attention and affection, curiosity, fear of losing ones security, and homesickness, among others.I just loved the story. At its core, it is a relatively common one: An ordinary child must conquer extraordinary evil forces to rescue herself and others. But once we get into the details of the plot, "Coraline" becomes original and striking, which is certainly the impression I got from it. What child hasn't dreamed of constructing their own "perfect," ideal life? Most children wouldn't fantasize about changing their world entirely, but to change it just a little bit? Tweak this, shuffle that, and you'd have a world with lots of toys, parents who let you do anything you wanted, and no gross food.Gaiman seems to understand children very well.The other mother was such an interesting character - always described as having a sort of knife-like appearance, thin and sharp. As the book progressed, she became more and more terrible and ominous. By the end, she has become not even human but just a cluster of bones scuttling about - a hand, that is. This was, in a way, even more frightening than her former appearances in a human form, because to contain one's essence in just a hand is decidedly inhuman.The world that Gaiman creates goes along perfectly with his minimalist writing style. The "other world" is a copy of the real world, and as a result it is always blander, not so colorful, and not so lifelike. When Coraline attempts to explore farther into the world, she eventually comes to just nothingness, which she at first mistakes for mist. The sense that this twisted world was empty came across to me without ever having to be said.The thing that I loved most was how creepy it was. I wouldn't call it frightening (though to children, I am sure that it would be), but there were plenty of chilly scenes, and the constant gloomy atmosphere of the book was certainly dark. There were plenty of vivid little scenes, like when the other mother begins eating live beetles as if they are candy, or when Coraline sees a painting change from depicting fruit to depicting rotting apple cores and grape stems. Coralin'es final faux doll-tea-party was especially vivid. This is such a wonderful little book that I would highly recommend to any child - or adult.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is such a fabulously creepy book! It has only reinforced my distrust of mirrors...This book has some super creepy moments, and I probably wouldn't recommend it to kids who are scared easily and who don't enjoy being scared. But to me, the scariness never becomes unmanageable, and on this re-read I think I figured out why. No matter how dark and scary things get, there's never really any doubt that Coraline is going to make it out of this ok. Why? Because Coraline never doubts it. She never panics. She ends up in a terrifying situation and actually thinks to herself (I'm paraphrasing), "Ok, I could either panic and run around until this thing catches me, or I could actually THINK for a second and get myself out of this." She is a wonderfully capable heroine who is determined not to do the things you yell at people for doing in horror movies -- or if she DOES do such things, she does them knowing full well that it's a dangerous thing to do and she's going to need her wits to get herself out of this one. Yet, at the same time, she's wonderfully real, and her intelligence and capability never seem preternatural, just brave. I really love this book, more so now than I did the first time I read it, if that's possible.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I wish I had read Coraline before The Graveyard Book, because I felt Coraline fell fairly short of my expectations. Do not get me wrong, Coraline was a fairly decent read, but to me it just lacked the sparkle of The Graveyard Book. Coraline is about a little girl with lameass parents who sit on the computer all day long. To be honest one of my thoughts was that it is pretty scary to think that one day my generation could be those parents.Coraline also has weird has-been neighbors and an eccentric old guy who lives upstairs with his mouse circus. Well, she gets bored one day and her parents continue to neglect her, so she decides to go exploring. She finds a whole world of trouble.I thought the characters were interesting, they all definitely had distinct personalities, but I just wanted more. I know the book is fairly short, so there may not be enough space to give me all I want with the book. I enjoyed reading about her weirdo neighbors, so it sucks they weren't more developed. Granted, I understand this is a children's book, not a character study. And, I concede, there are cool parts, like the theater scene, and well, the end is interesting. Also, Coraline is fairly well developed and we definitely see growth coming for her. I like that she's a strong girl character. I think she has some admirable characteristics for younger readers to look up to.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    nice story, respectful to children's intellect but could be too scary. not my favorite by him, maybe not even middle favorite, but still stands up. "the sky has never been so sky, the world has never been so world"
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Gaiman is at his best with his female characters. Always bold, always interesting, (almost) always in a heap of trouble. Coraline is a sweet story of a girl who knows what she wants and is brave enough to go after it, never succumbing to the simple pleasures of contrariness.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It was a quick read. I did see the movie before I read the book, but it was different. It was eerie, but still very well written. I'm a bit hesitant to read Neil Gaiman's adult novels, but only because I didn't find any synopsis i liked on books I've skimmed. Anyway, he's been well received by other people I've talked to.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Coraline discovers a mysterious door that leads to nowhere when she first opens it. The second time she opens the door, she discovers a dreamlike parallel universe with an identical house and doll-like versions of her parents live within. The dream state gradually becomes a nightmare the longer she stays in the world. Her "other mother" has no intention of allowing Coraline to escape. She wants to steal Coraline's soul!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Written and read by Neil Gaiman. Good in parts, and well read, but dragged on in other places.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A quick little read, Coraline is Neil Gaiman's first book for children. The book opens with Coraline's family moving into a new home. The house itself is very large, and has been separated into several flats, and in Coraline's she discovers a door that leads to a brick wall. Being an inquisitive child, she's curious about what lies on the other side of the door, but accepts that it's probably just the other side of the house that was closed off to make the flats. How wrong she is.It turns out that the door actually leads to her other house, identical in almost every way to her real house. In the other house, she discovers her other mother and other father, who are identical to her real mother and real father except for the fact that in place of their eyes, they have black buttons sewn in place. Everything in her other house is perfect; the food is better, and her other mother is willing to give her anything she wants. But deep down, Coraline realizes that this is wrong, that if she can have anything her heart desires, anything at all, but without earning it, then it means nothing, and she would be living a lie.It's a creepy little book, and in typical Gaiman fashion, he gives us very little background on what is happening, but writes the story in such a way that you just accept what is happening in the story. The stark illustrations by Dave McKean really add to the ambiance of the story. Not challenging, but thought provoking all the same.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Another great story from Neil Gaiman.Although it's too short (for me), it has the usual gaimanian weirdness and his unique style.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I'm ashamed to say that I didn't get to reading this until after I saw the movie (which was amazing). The book definately lived up to my expectations. It was interesting, original, exciting, creative, and funny. It was a quick read, but a thoroughly enjoyable one. Coraline is a great character and Neil Gaiman is a gifted storyteller.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Coraline and her family has just moved to a new house in the country, it’s come with a creepy man and a band of musical mice in the attic, and a pair of retired actresses with their hoard of Scottish Terriers in the downstairs apartment. The most interesting thing about their new home is a locked door in the living room which takes Coraline to a different world where her other mother wants to play instead of work and her other father makes the most delicious food. The other actresses put on plays all day and the other creepy man has talking rats instead of musical mice! However, as Caroline begins to see past the magic of the other world, she discovers that everything isn’t always as it seems, and perhaps her other mother isn’t motherly at all.I could not put this book down. The other world that Gaiman created was as creepy as it was riveting and his unlikely heroine was as much believable as loveable. It reminded me a lot of Alice in Wonderland with the overall feel, not to mention the philosophical and cunning cat. It is a book that kids as well as adults can enjoy and I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for an adventurous read. Caroline has been awarded the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 2003, Nebula Award for Best Novella in 2003 and the Bram Stroker Award for Best Work for YoungReaders in 2002. The book was also adapted into a Motion Picture by the same name in 2009.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Neil Gaiman has such a way with words the only comparison that I can make is Dickens. A true artist at the top of his game.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I got this book in the secret santa gift exchange. I loved it!!! It was the first time I read the book. After that I saw the movie. I was actually surprised by how creepy it was but at the same time how good it was. Thank to my secret santa for sending it my way. :)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    While exploring her house, a girl is sucked into an alternate universe with frightening parents. I still haven't gotten around to reading the adult Gaiman books that I have. This was delightful though and extremely well-done. It scared the crap out of me, even though it is a kids' book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    My Summary: Coraline Jones is an unhappy young girl. Having just moved to a new house in a new city, Coraline has no one to play with except her parents, who are too busy working to pay her any attention anyway. There are the neighbours - Mr. Bobinski, the mouse-tamer, and Ms. Spink and Ms. Forcible, retired actresses who can't seem to leave behind their days in the theatre - but there is nobody around her age, and Coraline is bored out of her mind.One day, while her parents are out, Coraline decides to explore the house, which is hundreds of years old. What she finds, though, is far more terrible than anything she could have ever imagined: Coraline find a door to another version of her life, where her 'other' mother and father cater to her every whim and desire. The only catch: they want to sew buttons into her eyes and keep her there with them forever.Now Coraline must fight to escape the clutches of her 'other' parents and save her real ones before time runs out.My Thoughts: Let me start off by saying that I got the movie version of Coraline for Christmas last year, and it is definitely one of my favourite movies of all time! I have watched that thing so many times that I decided I wanted to read the book as well, being the dedicated bookie that I am.The thing I liked about the book (and the movie, as well) is that is it classified as a children's novel, but the topics go much deeper than most children's novels. Here's an example of one of my favourite 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?"Neil Gaiman's writing (as usual) is awesome - although it was a lot simpler in comparison to his writing in The Graveyard Book. His words flow together beautifully, and it only took me an hour in total to finish the entire book. His writing was simple (no complicated, flowery descriptions or overly-long words) but it never feels like he is talking down to the reader, which I really admire in children's writers.And Coraline was such a great character! You really see her growing up during the book, and she really shines even while trying to deal with the bleak situation she's in.Final Thoughts: While I did enjoy the movie better, Coraline was still a really great book, and I recommend it to anyone who likes paranormal novels. I don't think it's a great movie to show / book to read to a young child though, since there are some scary parts that may frighten them. I think it should be alright for kids over 10, though. I also recommend watching the movie after reading!

Book preview

Coraline 10th Anniversary Edition - Neil Gaiman

Coraline

Neil Gaiman

with illustrations by Dave McKean

Dedication

I started this for Holly

I finished it for Maddy

Epigraph

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

—G. K. Chesterton

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Foreword

WE MOVED INTO OUR flat in Littlemead, in the tiny…

I.

CORALINE DISCOVERED THE DOOR a little while after they moved…

II.

THE NEXT DAY IT HAD stopped raining, but a thick…

III.

THE NEXT DAY THE sun shone, and Coraline’s mother took…

IV.

THE HOUSE LOOKED EXACTLY the same from the outside. Or…

V.

CORALINE LOCKED THE DOOR of the drawing room with the…

VI.

CORALINE WAS WOKEN BY the midmorning sun, full on her…

VII.

SOMEWHERE INSIDE HER Coraline could feel a huge sob welling…

VIII.

THE OTHER MOTHER LOOKED healthier than before: there was a…

IX.

OUTSIDE, THE WORLD HAD become a formless, swirling mist with…

X.

CORALINE WALKED UP THE stairs outside the building to the…

XI.

ONCE INSIDE, IN HER FLAT, or rather, in the flat…

XII.

HER MOTHER SHOOK HER gently awake.

XIII.

CORALINE’S PARENTS NEVER SEEMED to remember anything about their time…

Coraline Tenth Anniversary Edition

The Coraline Reading Group Guide

A Coraline Q&A with Neil Gaiman

An excerpt of Neil Gaiman’s Newbery Medal–winning novel, The Graveyard Book

Back Ad

About the Author

Praise for Coraline

Books by Neil Gaiman

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

Foreword

Coraline

WE MOVED INTO OUR flat in Littlemead, in the tiny Sussex town of Nutley, in the South of England, in 1987. Once on a time it had been a manor house, built for—the old man who had once owned the house, before he sold it to a pair of local builders, told me—the physician to the king of England himself. It had been a manor house then, but it was now converted into flats.

Flat number Four, where we lived, was a good place, if a little odd. Above us, a Greek family. Beneath us, a little old lady, half blind, who would telephone me whenever my little children moved, and tell me that she was not certain what was happening upstairs, but she thought that it must be elephants. I was never entirely certain how many flats there were in the house, nor how many of them were occupied.

We had a hallway running the length of the flat, as big as any room. At the end of the hall hung a wardrobe door, as a mirror.

When I started to write a book for Holly, my five-year-old daughter, I set it in the house. It seemed easy. That way I wouldn’t have to explain to her where anything was. I changed a couple of things, of course, swapped the position of Holly’s bedroom and the lounge. Then I took a closed oak-paneled door that opened onto a brick wall, and a sense of place, from the drawing room in the house I grew up in.

That house was big and old, and it had been split into two just before we moved there. We had the servants’ quarters, except for one room, the oak-paneled drawing room, only for best, with a door at the end that had once been the family’s entrance, and that now led nowhere. It opened onto a brick wall.

I took that room and that door, along with the front room of my grandmother’s house (only for best, not for the family, still-life oil paintings of fruit on the walls), and I put them into the book I had started writing.

The book was called Coraline. I had typed the name Caroline, and it came out wrong. I looked at the word Coraline, and knew it was someone’s name. I wanted to know what happened to her.

Holly liked scary stories, with witches and brave little girls in them. Those were the kinds of stories she told me. So Holly’s story was going to be scary.

I wrote an opening that I later deleted. It went,

This is the story of Coraline, who was small for her age, and found herself in darkest danger.

Before it was all over Coraline had seen what lay behind mirrors, and had a close call with a bad hand, and had come face-to-face with her other mother; she had rescued her true parents from a fate worse than death and triumphed against overwhelming odds.

This is the story of Coraline, who lost her parents, and found them again, and (more or less) escaped (more or less) unscathed.

I stopped writing Holly’s book when we moved to America. (I had been writing it in my own time. It didn’t seem like I had any own time any longer.)

Six years later I picked it up and continued from the middle of the sentence I’d stopped at in August 1992.

It was Hullo, said Coraline. How did you get in? The cat didn’t say anything. Coraline got out of bed

I started it again because I realized that if I didn’t, my youngest daughter, Maddy, would be too old for it by the time I was done. I started it for Holly. I finished it for Maddy.

Now we were living in a gothic old house in the middle of America, with a turret and a wraparound porch, with steps up to it. It’s a house built over a hundred years ago by a German immigrant, a cartographer (that’s someone who makes maps) and an artist. His son, Henry, was said to have been the first man to put an engine on a boat or on a bicycle and was described as the greatest creative figure in the history of the racing car.

Now I was writing Coraline again, I still had no time, so I would write fifty words a night in bed, before I fell asleep. I went on a cruise to raise money for the First Amendment (that’s the one about freedom of speech) in comics. I finished it in a little cabin on a lake in the woods.

Dave McKean, artist and friend, took photographs of Littlemead, which he then played with to make the house on the back cover of Coraline.

When Henry Selick made his stop-motion animated film of Coraline, he invited me to the studio. There were a lot of sets there, each behind a black curtain. Henry proudly showed me the house that Coraline lived in in the film. She’d moved from somewhere in England to Oregon, now, and the house she was in was called the Pink Palace.

That’s my house, I told Henry.

And it was. Henry Selick’s Pink Palace was the house I live in now, turret and porch and all. None of us are quite sure how that happened. But it seemed strangely appropriate for a book that was started for one daughter in one house and finished for another in another house.

The book was published in 2002, and people liked it. It won awards. More importantly than that, it worked, at least for some people.

I’d wanted to write a story for my daughters that told them something I wished I’d known when I was a boy: that being brave didn’t mean you weren’t scared. Being brave meant you were scared, really scared, badly scared, and you did the right thing anyway.

So now, ten years later, I’ve started running into women who tell me that Coraline got them through hard times in their lives. That when they were scared they thought of Coraline, and they did the right thing anyway.

And that, more than anything, makes it all worthwhile.

Neil Gaiman

December 5, 2011

I.

CORALINE DISCOVERED THE DOOR a little while after they moved into the house.

It was a very old house—it had an attic under the roof and a cellar under the ground and an overgrown garden with huge old trees in it.

Coraline’s family didn’t own all of the house—it was too big for that. Instead they owned part of it.

There were other people who lived in the old house.

Miss Spink and Miss Forcible lived in the flat below Coraline’s, on the ground floor. They were both old and round, and they lived in their flat with a number of ageing Highland terriers who had names like Hamish and Andrew and Jock. Once upon a time Miss Spink and Miss Forcible had been actresses, as Miss Spink told Coraline the first time she met her.

You see, Caroline, Miss Spink said, getting Coraline’s name wrong, both myself and Miss Forcible were famous actresses, in our time. We trod the boards, luvvy. Oh, don’t let Hamish eat the fruitcake, or he’ll be up all night with his tummy.

It’s Coraline. Not Caroline. Coraline, said Coraline.

In the flat above Coraline’s, under the roof, was a crazy old man with a big mustache. He told Coraline that he was training a mouse circus. He wouldn’t let anyone see it.

One day, little Caroline, when they are all ready, everyone in the whole world will see the wonders of my mouse circus. You ask me why you cannot see it now. Is that what you asked me?

No, said Coraline quietly, I asked you not to call me Caroline. It’s Coraline.

The reason you cannot see the mouse circus, said the man upstairs, "is that the mice are not yet ready and rehearsed. Also, they refuse to play the songs I have written for them. All the songs I have written for the mice to play go oompah oompah. But the white mice will only play toodle oodle, like that. I am thinking of trying them on different types of cheese."

Coraline didn’t think there really was a mouse circus. She thought the old man was probably making it up.

The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring.

She explored the garden. It was a big garden: at the very back was an old tennis court, but no one in the house played tennis and the fence around the court had holes in it and the net had mostly rotted away; there was an old rose garden, filled with stunted, flyblown rosebushes; there was a rockery that was all rocks; there was a fairy ring, made of squidgy brown toadstools which smelled dreadful if you accidentally trod on them.

There was also a well. On the first day Coraline’s family moved in, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible made a point of telling Coraline how dangerous the well was, and they warned her to be sure she kept away from it. So Coraline set off to explore for it, so that she knew where it was, to keep away from it properly.

She found it on the third day, in an overgrown meadow beside the tennis court, behind a clump of trees—a low brick circle almost hidden in the high grass. The well had been covered up by wooden boards, to stop anyone falling in. There was a small knothole in one of the boards, and Coraline spent an afternoon dropping pebbles and acorns through the hole and waiting, and counting, until she heard the plop as they hit the water far below.

Coraline also explored for animals. She found a hedgehog, and a snakeskin (but no snake), and a rock that looked just

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