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Coraline

Image from neilgaiman.com

Between the publication of the young adult novel by Neil Gaiman and its debut on the big screen, Coraline appeared in graphic novel form, adapted and illustrated by P. Craig Russell. Relating the tale of a self-styled girl explorer who is bored to tears by her busy parents and weird neighbors before discovering her too-good-to-be-true Other Mother just down a magical hallway, Russell renders his version Gaiman's yarn in a lush yet realistic style that is all the more disturbing when things take a turn for the horrific. Of particular interest graphically is the dynamic between the familiar world and the Other World and the look of the corresponding characters in each. While at first the differences are confined to the substitution of black buttons for eyes, as the story proceeds the two diverge in increasingly unsettling ways until even Coraline wonders how she could have ever mistaken the malevolent force she encounters for her real mom. As a narrative of an adventurer who navigates hazards primarily by wits and who comes to appreciate a home almost lost, Coraline could be used as an introduction to the themes of Homer's Odyssey.
  • Coraline by Neil Gaiman; adapted and illus. by P. Craig Russell
  • Middle School
  • HarperCollins
  • 186pp.
  • Published 2008
  • ISBN 978-0-06-082544-7 
  • $18.99
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