Reading Order
Coraline Reading Order
Neil Gaiman's Coraline (2002) is a children's horror novel — Coraline Jones, bored in a new house, discovering a small door that leads to the Other Mother, who looks like her real mother but has buttons for eyes and wants to keep Coraline forever. Gaiman wrote it for his daughter Holly, who wanted a story that would be scary, and it became one of the most beloved children's horror novels in English. Dave McKean's illustrations added to the novel's sinister atmosphere; Henry Selick's stop-motion film adaptation (2009) brought it to a wider audience. It is more concentrated and more genuinely frightening than The Graveyard Book.
Where to start
Coraline
Complete Coraline Book List
- 1Buy
Coraline
Neil Gaiman·2002·The complete short novel — the illustrated edition with Dave McKean's artwork is the original version; the 2009 film is a widely celebrated adaptation that expands several elements. - 2Buy
The Graveyard Book
Neil Gaiman·2008·The companion children's novel — Nobody Owens raised by ghosts in a graveyard, Gaiman's other great children's fantasy, slightly less frightening than Coraline but more emotionally expansive. - 3Buy
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll·1865·The source tradition — Alice through the rabbit hole into a world of arbitrary rules and threatening authority figures, the Victorian children's fantasy that Coraline most directly descends from.
Coraline — Frequently Asked Questions
How scary is Coraline?
Coraline is genuinely frightening — more so than most children's fiction and quite frightening for adult readers as well. The Other Mother with button eyes is one of the most effective horror creations in contemporary fiction. Gaiman has said that parents who read it to their children are often more frightened than the children are. It is suitable for readers from about age 8-10 who enjoy being frightened, and is inappropriate for younger children or children who find horror overwhelming. The film is similarly intense.
What is the Other World in Coraline?
The Other World is a parallel version of Coraline's real house, created or sustained by the entity Gaiman calls the Other Mother (or the Beldam), designed specifically to attract and capture children. The Other Mother can make a copy of anything in Coraline's real life — her parents, her neighbors, her flat — and initially the Other World appears better than the real one: the food is better, the parents more attentive, the garden magical. The sinister quality is established gradually as Coraline notices that everything in the Other World is slightly wrong in ways she cannot initially articulate.
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