WE MOVED INTO OUR flat in Littlemead, in the tiny Sussex town of Nutley, in the South of England, in 1987. ONCE INSIDE, IN HER FLAT, or rather, in the flat…ĬORALINE’S PARENTS NEVER SEEMED to remember anything about their time…Īn excerpt of Neil Gaiman’s Newbery Medal–winning novel, The Graveyard Book OUTSIDE, THE WORLD HAD become a formless, swirling mist with…ĬORALINE WALKED UP THE stairs outside the building to the… THE OTHER MOTHER LOOKED healthier than before: there was a… SOMEWHERE INSIDE HER Coraline could feel a huge sob welling… Or…ĬORALINE LOCKED THE DOOR of the drawing room with the…ĬORALINE WAS WOKEN BY the midmorning sun, full on her… THE HOUSE LOOKED EXACTLY the same from the outside. THE NEXT DAY THE sun shone, and Coraline’s mother took… THE NEXT DAY IT HAD stopped raining, but a thick…

WE MOVED INTO OUR flat in Littlemead, in the tiny…ĬORALINE DISCOVERED THE DOOR a little while after they moved… With illustrations by Dave McKean Dedicationįairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

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.

That's just tempting fate (as proved by me being a mere 5'3', after all my parents' hopes of me being very tall!).Ĭoraline's pretty short and easy to read, and wasn't even too bad to read on the screen like that. 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. 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.

That doesn't stop it being slightly creepy, slightly weird, and full of trademark Neil Gaiman observations about things. It is/was here, though.Ĭoraline is, I think, aimed at the youngest audience of all Gaiman's books that I've read. It's up right now as I write this, but I don't know how long for. 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.

Dave mckean coraline