By Jeff Kubik
Once upon as a time, there was a little girl named Coraline who found a house just like hers. It had another mother and another father, good food to eat, and rats. But when this little girl wanted to go home, they didn’t want her to leave.
Someone wrote Coraline’s story in a book for everyone to read. His name was Neil Gaiman and he called it, appropriately enough, Coraline.
Coraline was just like any other child her age; she wanted to explore her new house and everything inside it. Her parents didn’t pay her as much attention as she might have liked because they were very busy, so she was able to wander around as much as she liked.
Then one rainy day, stuck inside, she found a doorway that didn’t seem to go anywhere. Of course it did, because all doors lead to somewhere, and when Coraline stepped through, she found another house just like her own.
Things were a bit different than the house she was used to: the food was better for a start, but the people there, even the other mother and father, didn’t seem quite real. They had buttons for eyes and rats that spoke.
After that, things weren’t ever quite the same for Coraline again.
Now read carefully children, because you’ve got to understand a little something about Coraline’s story.
Just like Alice, who as we all know stepped through the looking glass, Coraline’s story is about a place that has all the things we’re so used to, bent and twisted into a reality that doesn’t make sense.
Some things in this story may be frightening, but don’t be scared. There are no explosions or bogeymen popping out of walls and there aren’t any starts or startles. Things are just a little different, and that children, can be very scary in a familiar place.
Sometimes though, I suppose it’s nice to be somewhere different. There are times when we all want to escape to a place that’s a little darker and not quite real; just for a while though.
And so, the reader closed the book feeling satisfied and maybe, just maybe, decided to sleep with the light on tonight instead.