Coraline (2001)
Coraline is a 2001 fantasy book written by Neil Gaiman.
The new flat is dull, the adults are busy, and Coraline Jones has counted everything worth counting. Behind a locked door in the drawing room she finds a passage to a home just like hers, only brighter, where an other mother and other father wait with dinner ready and buttons for eyes. They want her to stay. Neil Gaiman writes this small nightmare in a plain, unhurried voice that makes the wrongness worse, a fairy tale about the price of a place where every wish is granted.
Quick answers
What is Coraline about?
The new flat is dull, the adults are busy, and Coraline Jones has counted everything worth counting. Behind a locked door in the drawing room she finds a passage to a home just like hers, only brighter, where an other mother and other father wait with dinner ready and buttons for eyes. They want her to stay. Neil Gaiman writes this small nightmare in a plain, unhurried voice that makes the wrongness worse, a fairy tale about the price of a place where every wish is granted.
When was Coraline published?
Coraline was published in 2001.
Who made Coraline?
Coraline was written by Neil Gaiman.
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- Companion guide: The Adaptation Shelf: YA Books on Screen, the Triumphs and the Trainwrecks
A few thoughts on Coraline
The 2009 stop-motion Coraline, directed by Henry Selick, matches the book's handmade dread almost frame for frame. Spirited Away sends another young girl into a lavish other-world that wants to keep her and rewrite who she is. For something you play, Little Nightmares turns the same childhood unease into a hushed, storybook-grim puzzle.
A door that opens onto a home too perfect to be real
Coraline finds a locked door that opens onto a version of her flat where the food is better and the parents pay attention, until the price becomes clear. The same bargain runs through the 2009 film, Spirited Away's spirit-run bathhouse, the girl raised on swallowed moonlight by the witch who saved her, and a school that sorts children into hero or villain before they choose.
Something patient on the other side, waiting to keep you
Coraline's other mother is patient, generous, and unwilling to let go once she decides to keep a child. That same slow-closing trap runs through FROM's town that won't release its wanderers, Stranger Things' entity hunting kids from another dimension, The Institute's facility holding gifted children captive, Black Butler's demon quietly waiting to collect a promised soul, and Supernatural's demons always circling for one to claim.
A friendly face hiding real body horror underneath
Coraline's other mother looks almost right until her hands and her button eyes give her away, and that same curdling of something sweet into something wrong drives Little Nightmares' childlike nightmare world, Made in Abyss's cheerful art hiding real mutilation, Dororo's ordinary boy missing the body parts demons stole at birth, and Tomie's beautiful girl who will not stay dead or whole.