Introduction

Coraline (/ˈkɒrəlaɪn/)[2] is a 2002 British dark fantasy horror children's novella by author Neil Gaiman. Gaiman started writing Coraline in 1990, and it was published in 2002 by Bloomsbury and HarperCollins. It was awarded the 2003 Hugo Award for Best Novella,[3] the 2003 Nebula Award for Best Novel,[4] and the 2002 Bram Stoker Award for Best Work for Young Readers.[5] The Guardian ranked Coraline #82 in its list of 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.[6] It was adapted as a 2009 stop-motion animated film, directed by Henry Selick under the same name.

Plot

Coraline Jones and her parents move into an old house that has been divided into flats. The other tenants include Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, two elderly women retired from the stage, and Mr. Bobo (commonly referred as the "Crazy Old Man Upstairs"), who claims to be training a mouse circus. The flat beside Coraline's, which lies behind a big brown door, remains empty.

During a rainy day she discovers the locked door in the living room, which has been bricked up. As she goes to visit her neighbors, Mr. Bobo relates to her a message from the mice: Don't go through the door. At tea with Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, Miss Spink senses danger in Coraline’s future after reading her tea leaves and gives her a lucky adder stone. They then explain that it is "good for bad things". Despite these warnings, Coraline decides to unlock the door when she is home by herself and finds the brick wall behind the door gone. In its place is a long passageway, which leads to a flat identical to her own, inhabited by her Other Mother and Other Father, who are replicas of her real parents. They have button eyes and exaggerated features. In this “Other World”, Coraline finds everything to be better than her reality: her Other Parents are attentive, her toy box is filled with animate toys that can move and fly, and the Other Miss Spink and Miss Forcible forever perform a cabaret show in their flat. She even finds the feral Black Cat that wanders around the house in the real world can talk, however she learns he is not of the Other World; he only travels from one world to another and warns Coraline of the imminent danger, but Coraline pays him no heed.

The Other Mother offers Coraline a chance to stay in the Other World forever, if Coraline will allow buttons to be sewn into her eyes. Coraline is horrified and returns back through the door to go home. Upon her return to her apartment, Coraline finds her real parents are missing. They do not return the next day, and the black cat wakes her and takes her to a mirror in her hallway, through which she can see her trapped parents. They signal to her by writing "Help Us" on the glass, from which Coraline deduces the Other Mother has kidnapped them. Though frightened of returning, Coraline goes back to the Other World to confront the Other Mother and rescue her parents. In the garden, Coraline is prompted by the Cat to challenge the Other Mother, as “her kind of thing loves games and challenges”. The Other Mother tries to convince Coraline to stay, but Coraline refuses, and is locked behind a mirror as punishment.

In the darkness, she meets three ghost children, each from a different era, who had let the "Beldam" (the Other Mother) sew buttons in their eyes. They tell her how she eventually stopped loving them and cast their spirits aside. The ghost children implore Coraline to avoid their fate, and to help find their souls so that they can leave the Other World and pass on. After the Other Mother releases Coraline from the mirror, Coraline proposes a game in which she must find the ghost children’s souls and her parents, which lay hidden throughout the Other World. If Coraline wins, she, her parents and the ghost children may go free. If not, Coraline will let the Other Mother sew the buttons into her eyes.

Coraline goes through the Other World, and overcomes all the Other Mother’s obstacles, using her wits and Miss Spink’s stone to locate the ghost children’s souls. At the close of the game, the ghost children warn her even if Coraline wins, the Other Mother will not let them go. Having deduced her parents are imprisoned in the snow globe on the mantle, Coraline tricks the Other Mother by saying her parents are behind the door in the drawing room. As the Other Mother opens the door, Coraline throws the cat at the Other Mother, grabs the snow globe, and escapes to the real world with the key. In doing so, she forces the door shut on the Other Mother's hand, severing it. Back in her home, Coraline finds her parents safe and with no memory of the events.

That night, Coraline has a dream in which she meets the three children before they move on to the afterlife. They warn her that her task is still not done: the Other Mother's severed hand is in Coraline's world, attempting to steal the key which opens the door that connects the two worlds. Coraline goes to an old well in the woods by her house, luring the Other Mother’s hand there with the key by pretending to have a picnic with her dolls. By doing so, she casts both down the bottomless well. Coraline returns home, victorious, and prepares to go about the ordinary life she has come to accept and love.

Characters

Coraline Jones is the main character. She is a curious, intelligent, resourceful, and courageous girl. Coraline is often irritated by rain, her "crazy" grown-up neighbors, and not being taken seriously because of her young age. She is described as being "small for her age".
Mel Jones is Coraline's mother. She is very busy most of the time, and sometimes inattentive, but she loves and cares about Coraline.
Charlie Jones is Coraline's father. He cares about Coraline very much and is kind, brave, and helpful. He makes "creative" food creations that Coraline strongly dislikes. He is usually found working at the house on his computer. He, like his wife, Mrs. Jones, is usually too busy to spend time with Coraline.
The Cat is a black cat from the real world, who acts as a mentor to Coraline and guides her through her journey. He is unnamed, as he explains that cats do not need names to tell each other apart, but the Other Mother refers to him as "Vermin". Unlike many of the characters in the novel, he does not have an "Other World" counterpart, as he states that unlike other creatures in the world, cats can "keep themselves together." He moves freely from one world to the other and is capable of talking in the Other World. He has a sarcastic personality, constantly belittling Coraline, but befriends and helps her escape from the Beldam. He is defiant of the Other Mother, but trembles at the thought of being stuck in the Other World forever.
The Beldam (also known as The Other Mother) is the main antagonist of the novel. She is an evil, inhuman sorceress and the ruler of the Other World. In her first form, she looks similar to Coraline's real mother but taller and thinner, with long black hair that seems to move by itself, black button eyes, paper-white skin, and extremely long, twitchy fingers with long dark red nails. During the course of the novel, she grows taller, thinner, and paler, having little physical similarities to Coraline's mother by the end, suggesting she has the ability to metamorphose. She cannot create, but only copy, twist, and change things from the real world when constructing her version of it. She collects children, whom she loves possessively to the point of their eventual destruction, taking their souls so they cannot leave her world and caring for them until they pass away, but wanting to feel their happiness and joy afterwards.
The Other Father is one of the creations of the Beldam, in the image of Mr. Jones, the Other Father is used to help trick Coraline to stay in the Other World. Like her real father, he has a study and sits there during the day and will not talk to Coraline for long. He does not work, he merely occupies the study, and is not permitted to talk to Coraline without the Beldam's influence. He appears to be much more enjoyable than Coraline's real father and always tries to be cheerful and fun in front of Coraline. In reality, the Other Father is sad and somewhat nervous. The Beldam ends up punishing him for revealing too much to Coraline—she transforms him into a soft, doughy, grub-like creature, and orders the Other Father to trap Coraline so she cannot win her challenge. He voices his reluctance not to harm her, yet cannot refuse the Beldam's orders.
April Spink and Miriam Forcible are a pair of retired actresses who live in the flat under Coraline's. They own many aging Scotties and talk in theater jargon, often referencing their glory days as actresses. In the Other World, they are youthful and perform continuously in front of anthropomorphic dogs. Later in the novel, the Other Spink and Forcible appear to be conjoined twins inside a cocoon-like sac where they possess the second soul. As for the dogs, they appear to be vampire bat hybrids.
Mr. Bobo is a retired circus performer living in the flat above Coraline's and is commonly referred to throughout the story as the "Crazy Old Man Upstairs". Over the course of the book, he claims to be training mice to perform in a mouse circus, and often brings Coraline messages from them. His Other World counterpart trains rats and is made of rats.
The Ghost Children are the spirits of three children, two girls and one boy, who were the previous victims of Beldam. The boy is described as having a dirty face and red trousers. One of the girls has blonde hair with a circle of glittering silver, a dress with a pattern of spider webs, and a pair of silver butterfly wings coming out of her back (implying that she might be a fairy). The other has a brown bonnet and brown dress. They were trapped by the Beldam at different times before Coraline and reside in the dark space behind the mirror. After having their souls restored, they go to the afterlife.

Adaptations

Graphic novel

A graphic novel adaptation by P. Craig Russell, lettered by Todd Klein and colored by Lovern Kindzierski, was published in 2008.[7]

Film

With the help of the animation studio Laika, LLC, director Henry Selick released a stop motion film adaptation in 2009 that received much critical acclaim, and moderate box office success. At the 82nd Academy Awards, the film was nominated for Best Animated Feature but lost to Pixar's Up. Although the 2009 film has several differences (one example is the Beldam turning the Other Father into a pumpkin), it still manages to hold relatively strong to the original plot of the book. In the film, Coraline is depicted as having short blue hair and freckles. In the movie, there was an added new character named Wyborn "Wybie" Lovat, a boy about Coraline's age who frequently annoyed Coraline at first, but over time, they grow on each other. In the Other World, his copy cannot speak but is an ally to Coraline, and gets punished by the Other Mother when he helps Coraline escape the Other World. At the end of the film, Coraline reaches out to help Wybie tell his grandmother what is behind the little door. The sister of Wybie's grandmother was one of the ghost children lost to the Beldam.

Theatre

2009 musical

A theatrical adaptation, with music and lyrics by Stephin Merritt and book by David Greenspan, premiered on 6 May 2009, produced by MCC Theater and True Love Productions Off-Broadway at The Lucille Lortel Theatre.[8] Nine-year-old Coraline was played by an adult, Jayne Houdyshell, and the Other Mother was played by David Greenspan.[8]

2018 opera

Another theatrical adaptation, a stage opera by Mark-Anthony Turnage based on the novella, made its world premiere at the Barbican Centre in London on 27 March 2018.

2025 musical

On 22 May 2024, it was announced that a new musical adaptation, with music and lyrics by Louis Barabbas and book by Zinnie Harris, would premiere at the Leeds Playhouse on 11 April 2025, before embarking on a tour to the HOME (Manchester), the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, and the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh.[9]

Video games

A 2009 video game adaptation, based on the film, was published and developed by D3 Publisher of America. The game was released on 27 January 2009 for the PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS and Wii platforms and contains features such as playing as Coraline, interacting with other characters, and playing minigames. The game received mostly negative reviews, and little success.[10][11]

Parodies

Coraline inspired the "Coralisa" segment of The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror XXVIII", which aired on 22 October 2017. Neil Gaiman provided the voice of the Simpsons' cat, Snowball V.[12]