There’s no one like Neil Gaiman. He walks the line between faerie and frightening with incredible deftness, and he mines the wondrous/horrifying imagination of children in a way that cuts your heart as an adult. It’s remarkable and scary all at once.
In other news: I finally read Coraline. I devoured it in a big gulp, but I also shivered in some parts. And the illustrations definitely enhance the book.
Coraline Jones is a young girl whose family has moved to a big house. But there’s a strange room and a strange door and a strange key that seems to lead to a brick wall, but actually unlocks to a new corridor one day. There, Coraline discovers her house—but it’s an odd exaggeration of her house. There’s another mother and another father, another bedroom, and replications of her upstairs neighbors. The food tastes better, and her parents pay complete attention to her. But Coraline can’t shake the nagging feeling that something is very, very wrong. It’s up to her cleverness and imagination to bring her back to her real home and her real parents.
There are a few things I learned from this book:
1. Never trust anyone with button eyes.
2. Cats are friends. They will help a sister out.
3. Mice seem to know what is happening. Rats are rats.
4. Dolls are useful decoys.
I haven’t read the book, but rather enjoyed the book. My screenwriting teacher even recommended it as good research for my dark fantasy project as it involved kids and was scary and entertaining enough for adults. This is hard to write, lemme tell ya! You know the ending, I say go for it.