So many of the good stories have some way to get into a magical world – doors and wardrobes (C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair and The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe), mirrors (Lewis Caroll’s Through the Looking Glass) or even fireplaces (obligatory Dr. Who reference…). In Coraline, there’s a door which normally opens to a brick wall, but one night that changes.

Coraline, like many young girls in good stories, is an explorer. She loves to explore the grounds around the house her family has just moved in to, so of course a locked door with nothing but a brick wall behind would hold fascination for Coraline. Especially when one evening the door was opened a crack, after being locked earlier in the day. On the other side of the door exhists a house that is very similar to the one Coraline lives in, with only a few small differences. Her parents there, who call themselves her other parents, however, want to keep Coraline forever and not let her go back into her real world.

This book was nowhere near nightmare inducing, as apparantely most adults find it, but it was deliciously creepy. Everything in that other world was creepy, from her parents, to the neighbours, to the rats… Of course, I think the illustrations (done by Dave McKean) help in a large part.

As much as I enjoyed the book, it was the interview with Gaiman in the back of the book that made me a fan. At one point, he says:

As for believing in fairies . . . many years ago I wrote the copyright notice for a comic called The Books of Magic, in which I said words to the effect of “All the characters, human or otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the faerie folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof.” A position I still wholeheartedly support and defend.

And another…

I think most things are pretty magical, and that it’s less a matter of belief than it is one of just stopping to notice.

This was the first book I’ve read by Gaiman… so many people have been blogging about his stuff lately, that I needed to see what everyone was raving about. I’m definitely going to be reading more of his stuff. Plus, I hear there’s going to be a Coraline movie, and that TMBG is doing the music for it… can we say “greatest thing ever” here? I think so.

Yet another addition for the Once Upon a Time Challenge.