Where can i read coraline online

Is that what you asked me? Also, they refuse to play the songs I have written for them. All the songs I have written for the mice to play go oompah oompah. But the white mice will only play toodle oodle, like that. I am thinking of trying them on different types of cheese. She thought the old man was probably making it up. The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring.

She explored the garden. It was a big garden: at the very back was an old tennis court, but no one in the house played tennis and the fence around the court had holes in it and the net had mostly rotted away; there was an old rose garden, filled with stunted, flyblown rosebushes; there was a rockery that was all rocks; there was a fairy ring, made of squidgy brown toadstools which smelled dreadful if you accidentally trod on them.

There was also a well. So Coraline set off to explore for it, so that she knew where it was, to keep away from it properly. She found it on the third day, in an overgrown meadow beside the tennis court, behind a clump of trees—a low brick circle almost hidden in the high grass. The well had been covered up by wooden boards, to stop anyone falling in.

There was a small knothole in one of the boards, and Coraline spent an afternoon dropping pebbles and acorns through the hole and waiting, and counting, until she heard the plop as they hit the water far below.

Coraline also explored for animals. She found a hedgehog, and a snakeskin but no snake , and a rock that looked just like a frog, and a toad that looked just like a rock. There was also a haughty black cat, who sat on walls and tree stumps and watched her but slipped away if ever she went over to try to play with it.

That was how she spent her first two weeks in the house—exploring the garden and the grounds. Her mother made her come back inside for dinner and for lunch. It opened onto a brick wall. The book was called Coraline. I had typed the name Caroline, and it came out wrong. I wanted to know what happened to her. Holly liked scary stories, with witches and brave little girls in them. Those were the kinds of stories she told me. I wrote an opening that I later deleted.

It went, This is the story of Coraline, who was small for her age, and found herself in darkest danger. Before it was all over Coraline had seen what lay behind mirrors, and had a close call with a bad hand, and had come face-to-face with her other mother; she had rescued her true parents from a fate worse than death and triumphed against overwhelming odds.

This is the story of Coraline, who lost her parents, and found them again, and more or less escaped more or less unscathed. I had been writing it in my own time. I started it for Holly. I finished it for Maddy. Now we were living in a gothic old house in the middle of America, with a turret and a wraparound porch, with steps up to it.

I finished it in a little cabin on a lake in the woods. Dave McKean, artist and friend, took photographs of Littlemead, which he then played with to make the house on the back cover of Coraline. When Henry Selick made his stop-motion animated film of Coraline, he invited me to the studio. There were a lot of sets there, each behind a black curtain. Henry proudly showed me the house that Coraline lived in in the film. And it was. None of us are quite sure how that happened. But it seemed strangely appropriate for a book that was started for one daughter in one house and finished for another in another house.

The book was published in , and people liked it. It won awards. More importantly than that, it worked, at least for some people. Being brave meant you were scared, really scared, badly scared, and you did the right thing anyway.

That when they were scared they thought of Coraline, and they did the right thing anyway. And that, more than anything, makes it all worthwhile. Neil Gaiman December 5, I. Instead they owned part of it. There were other people who lived in the old house.

They were both old and round, and they lived in their flat with a number of ageing Highland terriers who had names like Hamish and Andrew and Jock. We trod the boards, luvvy. Not Caroline. He told Coraline that he was training a mouse circus. You ask me why you cannot see it now. Is that what you asked me? Also, they refuse to play the songs I have written for them.

All the songs I have written for the mice to play go oompah oompah. But the white mice will only play toodle oodle, like that. Neil Gaiman Acolytes of Cthulhu. Jakob Grimm Grimm's Fairy Tales. Neil Gaiman , E. Jones The Road to En-dor. Neil Gaiman Sweet Justice. Ellen Ullman By Blood. Report this. Show all. Being brave means you are scared, really scared, badly scared, and you do the right thing anyway. Now, you people have names.

On the bookshelves.