Coraline by Neil Gaiman
I met Neil Gaiman at a conference a couple months ago and I have been eager to read this book ever since. Finally I managed to get my hands on it.
On the surface the story seems very typical. A family has recently moved house. Mother and Father are too busy with their own projects to spend any time with their only daughter, and so she finds her own amusement. She considers herself an explorer, and spends her time exploring every nook and cranny of the house and immediate neighborhood. She meets the sisters next door and the man upstairs with the mouse circus. But mostly she is fascinated by the locked cupboard. And then she finds the key …
This is a very interesting book. It is certainly a horror for children, but the age of the children intended as audience is a little hard to pick. Coraline is only in primary school behaves accordingly. But I am a little uncomfortable about the level of violence and horror for primary children. The Victorian Premier’s Reading Challenge has graded it for years 7 and 8, and I think that is about right. Certainly the book’s popularity is at that level.
