Honestly I have zero clue how this book is for children. On the back cover it DOES say "For Ages 8 & Up," but knowing me, there's no way I could have read this book at age eight. I could barely even read it now. I liked that the book was short - 160 pages - and it really read as more of a short horror story than a children's chapter book.
Knowing the movie like the back of my hand might have been the reason I was able to get through this piece. The movie did add some different things to the story:
- Wybie, Coraline's friend who gets buttons sewn onto his eyes by Other Mother
- A doll through which the Other Mother watches Coraline
- The magic garden with her Other Father
- The mouse circus
- A time limit on Coraline's ghost children challenge
- The Other Father attacking her IN the garden
- Other Mother chasing Coraline through a magical spider web back to reality
Let's start by talking about the ghost children hunt. In both stories, Coraline meets the ghost children and needs to find their eyes to allow them to escape the Other Mother. In the movie, Coraline finds the souls in the conjoined sister cocoon in the theater, in the garden with her Other Father, and with a rat that used to be a part of her upstairs neighbor. In the In the book, Coraline finds the eyes in a toy box, the conjoined sister cocoon in the theater, and with a rat that used to be a part of her upstairs neighbor.
The key thing left out of the movie that was included in the book was (in my opinion) the scariest part of the story. Man. So, Coraline ventures into her neighbor's cellar in search of the ghost souls. When she reaches the end of the staircase, she switches lights on until she reaches the end of the cellar where she sees a monster-like swollen clay-like figure that vaguely resembles her Other Father. Other Mother had trapped him down there to punish him for revealing too much information on how to defeat her. Coraline is attacked by this monster and uses her wit to escape. Really really freaky. I can see why they made this scene much less scary for the movie. They kind of just made him a blubbering minion completely controlled by Other Mother.
The message of this book was so amazing, and is something that really isn't captured as well through the movie. The message of the story is essentially "being brave doesn't mean you're not scared of things, it means being incredibly scared of something and doing it anyway because it's the right thing to do." Reading this book, it honestly gave me courage. If Coraline, amidst the scariest and creepiest of situations EVER, was still strong enough to give up everything and face unspeakable terrors to save herself and her family, then what's stopping me? If I were in Coraline's situation, I would have been so overwhelmed that I can easily see myself giving up and running away from the things I'm afraid of. But the fact that she wasn't - and the reader gets to join her as she IS brave - has inspired me to not let the scary and crippling things in life decide what I do and who I am.
