Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Rating: ★★★★★

First off, I thought this book was brilliantly paced, especially for such a short novel. Gaiman starts and ends the story at the perfect time, without wasting any page space on unneeded context. I can see this being especially important to access a younger audience who needs to be engrossed from the very first page. And I definitely was! I'm always so impressed by how Gaiman balances the most rich description with efficiency of storytelling.

I've always heard that Gaiman began writing this novel as a transcription of the stories he told his children before bed, and that came through in the writing in the most lovely way. I can totally picture reading this aloud to a group of kids; I could practically hear the character voices in my head the whole time. Also, I appreciated how Gaiman never once spoke down to his audience. While everything is accessible to a child's perspective, he doesn't feel the need to spell out absolutely everything, and let's the audience solve some of the puzzles all by themself.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It worked well both as a cleverly told, engaging horror novel, and an excellent children's story. I liked reading it even more than I loved the movie as a kid (though I totally heard Keith David's voice for all the cat's dialogue).

Recommendations:

Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton. While definitely a divergence from the horror genre, Hollow Kingdom is another book that deals with darker subject matter through the eyes of an optimistic and naive protagonist. Hollow Kingdom has a much more humorous tone than Coraline, but still tells a very heartfelt story of a protagonist learning to defend the home and people they love-- people who should, perhaps, have been defending them. Also, if the sarcastic talking cat was a highlight of Coraline for you (as it was for me), Hollow Kingdom is seriously the book for you.

Black Paradox by Junji Ito. Okay, hear me out. While this doesn't relate to the children's novel tone of Coraline, I actually found a lot in common with the more adventure-driven interpretation of the horror genre. Black Paradox, like Coraline, very much felt like the protagonists had taken back the narrative by the end of the story. And they're fun to cheer on!