Coraline: The Graphic Novel

Coraline: The Graphic Novel
By: Neil Gaiman
Harper Collins 2008
Graphic Novel Requirement

Coraline is a very odd book, but I believe it is a great example of a book that needs to be told through pictures so you can really understand what you are being told.  Coraline is a young girl that moved into a vacation home for the summer that used to belong to her grandmother. Our first impressions of her parents are that they are very distant from their daughter. The father is constantly working, and the mother doesn't really seem to care for the well being of the child. Coraline loves exploring and as she does this we notice the odd people that also live at the residence. There are 2 old women that used to be actresses that give Coraline an odd gift, and a strange old man that is always talking about his mice. The strangest of all is a door in Coraline's flat that leads to no where. Being as adventurous as she is she decides to find out the secrets of the door and later on opens it to find that it leads somewhere. When she gets to the other side she meets her other parents. The other parents are creepy, alternate world versions that are trying to make themselves out to be better than her true parents. Coraline does not give in to the manipulation, but finds out her real parents are gone and she has to save them. There are other children she has to save as her adventure goes on behind the door. Coraline prevails and uses her will power and courage to beat the evil other mother and save the souls of the ones she loves.

I remember reading this book a very long time ago and from what I remember they did a very good job of transferring it over to a graphic novel format. The book is extremely strange and I feel like the graphic novel aspect of it just adds to the story telling and is almost needed to convey what the author is trying to get us to picture. For a childrens' book I think it is actually kind of terrifying. The pictures are really creepy and disturbing which made me very confused since it was supposed to be for ages 8 and up. I might have this in a 5th or 6th grade class but nothing under that. I think the book does teach a very important lesson though. We can not take what we have for granted, because there is probably something much worse out their. Appreciate what you have because it is probably no where near as bad as you think it may be. It is a very compelling story line but I do wish we could go into more depth of who the other mother was exactly so it falls short in that department. Also, I was a bit disappointed with the fact that there were not a lot of otamatapeias throughout it so it didn't really feel like a comic to me, and I felt like they could have done more with that. It was a fun read, and very creepy but nothing super extraordinary.