Coraline by Neil Gaiman
I mentioned Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean in my Picture Book list for The Wolves in the Walls, but they also teamed up for a kids’ novel in 2002. Coraline is a little bit like an Alice in Wonderland, but with an extra helping of creepy. Coraline (not Caroline, mind you) is a young girl who has recently moved into a big house with her parents. There are other tenants in the rest of the house, like the crazy old man in the attic with the trained mouse circus, and the former actresses Miss Spink and Miss Forcible who live in the flat below Coraline’s.
What’s really interesting about the old house, though, is the door in the drawing room that opens onto nothing but a brick wall—probably bricked up when the house was divided up into flats, Coraline’s mother explains. Except one day when Coraline opens the door, there isn’t a brick wall—instead there’s a passage to a mirror world, with a much more attentive father and a mother who cooks delicious meals and a room filled with fantastic toys and books. Oh, and some eerie singing rats. And also the other people she meets there have buttons for eyes—and if you don’t think that’s creepy that’s just because you haven’t seen what McKean can do with buttons.
Without giving away too much, Coraline eventually finds herself needing to go back to the mirror world to rescue her parents, and it becomes more and more clear that it’s not all fun and games on the other side of the passage.
The graphic novel adaptation, published in 2008, is quite well done. P. Craig Russell illustrated some of the stories in the Sandman series and I’ve always enjoyed his style, which calls to mind old fairy tale illustrations, mostly realistic drawings. But it’s also hard to pass up Dave McKean’s illustrations—he stresses the grotesque more than the realism, and his drawings are often scarier for it. I actually own both versions and it’s hard to say which I like better.
And, of course, Coraline was made into a stop-motion animated film in 2009 by director Henry Selick. It was nominated for (but didn’t win) the Best Animated Feature, and mostly got great reviews. But really you should read the book first.
