Coraline

Gaiman, Neil. Coraline. HarperCollins, 2002. Paperback ISBN 13 978-0380977789 $6.99

Awards: 

• Publishers Weekly Best Book (WINNER)

• Book Sense 76 Pick (WINNER)

• Child Magazine Best Book of the Year (WINNER)

• New York Public Library's "One Hundred Titles for Reading and Sharing" (WINNER)

• Amazon.com Editors Choice (WINNER)

• ALA Notable Children's Book (WINNER)

• ALA Best Book for Young Adults (WINNER)

• New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age (WINNER)

• IRA/CBC Children's Choice (WINNER)

• Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award Masterlist (Vermont) (WINNER)

• Bram Stoker Award for Best Work for Young Readers (WINNER)

• Hugo Award for Best Novella (WINNER)

• School Library Journal Best Book (WINNER)

Annotation: Coraline has moved to a new flat.  Inside are fourteen doors.  Thirteen are locked; the fourteenth contains a strange world that is both similar and strangely different.

In this highly imaginative story Neil Gaiman creates a modern fairy tale.  Coraline, bored with her conventional life, finds a door leading to an alternate reality.  The world seems perfect, everything that is wrong in the real world is solved in the "other house."  But her other mother has sinister plans.  Coraline must rescue her parents and solve the mystery of the ancient portal.  She must summon all of her courage and wits to outfox the other mother and solve the riddles.  I highly recommend this book to teens, pre-teens and adults.  

Damien L. age 14 suggests "if you have seen the movie, don't expect the novel to match...it's good for it's own reasons.