Recommendations
Books Like Coraline
Best books to read after Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman's Coraline is children's horror at its most effective — the Other Mother, the button eyes, the world that seems better until it isn't. These recommendations continue the Gaiman canon, explore the tradition of dark children's fantasy, or offer companion reading in the tradition of the child protagonist in a threatening domestic world.
- 1Buy
The Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman
The companion Gaiman — Bod Owens raised by ghosts, similarly a dark children's novel about a child living outside ordinary childhood, slightly warmer and more adventure-oriented than Coraline.
- 2Buy
Neverwhere
by Neil Gaiman
The adult urban companion — Richard Mayhew falling into London Below, the same 'world beneath the world' premise in a contemporary adult setting, the natural next Gaiman for readers who have outgrown the children's books.
- 3Buy
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll
The source tradition — Alice in a world of arbitrary rules and threatening authority figures, the original portal fantasy for children with an unsettling adult undercurrent, the Victorian children's horror that Coraline most directly descends from.
- 4Buy
Through the Looking-Glass
by Lewis Carroll
The companion Alice — the chess game world, the Red Queen, Humpty Dumpty, the continuation of the threatening dream logic that connects Carroll to Gaiman's Coraline.
- 5Buy
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
by Neil Gaiman
The adult literary companion — a middle-aged man remembering the terrible thing that happened when he was seven, Gaiman engaging with the same themes of childhood vulnerability and adult helplessness from the adult perspective.
- 6Buy
His Dark Materials
by Philip Pullman
The most philosophically ambitious dark children's fantasy — Lyra Belacqua and the Magisterium, Pullman's trilogy sharing Coraline's willingness to put a child protagonist in genuine danger and to engage with death and loss seriously.
- 7Buy
The Haunting of Hill House
by Shirley Jackson
The adult gothic horror companion — Eleanor Vance in the house that is evil, Jackson's masterpiece sharing Coraline's interest in a threatening domestic space and a female protagonist who may be losing her grip on what is real.
- 8Buy
The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James
The Victorian ghost story companion — the governess in the house with the children who may or may not be haunted, James's ambiguous horror sharing Coraline's interest in threatening adults and the unreliable perception of a single protagonist.
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