Reading Update: Coraline by Neil Gaiman

This little read is CREEPY, and middle schoolers tend to like creepy. Coraline has moved to a new house with her parents, and Coraline meets her peculiar neighbors: an old man who trains rats and two old women who revel in the past, a time when they were stage actresses. Despite her interesting neighbors, Coraline is often bored, and her parents have little time for their daughter.
     As she explores her new home on her own, Coraline becomes intrigued with a door in the dining room that leads... nowhere. The door has been blocked with an old brick wall. Coraline sneaks the key from her mother and opens the door again late one night, and this time the door opens to a mysterious dark tunnel. And here the dark adventure awaits.
     I found the book to provide some excellent descriptions of setting, and I would recommend using excerpts for student exemplars.

The theater was derelict and abandoned. Chairs were broken on the floor, and old, dusty spiderwebs draped the walls and hung from the rotten wood and the decomposing velvet hangings (99). 

Coraline let herself down into the hole, looking nervously at the trapdoor. It was so heavy that if it fell she was sure she would be trapped down in the darkness forever. She put up a hand and touched it, but it stayed in position. And then she turned toward the darkness below, and she walked down the steps. Set into the wall at the bottom of the steps was another light switch, metal and rusting. She pushed it until it clicked down, and a naked bulb hanging from a wire from the low ceiling came on. It did not give up enough light even for Coraline to make out the things that had been painted onto the flaking cellar walls (109). 

Practical Considerations: This book belongs in a classroom library, and I highly recommend it as a class read-aloud for middle schoolers. Major themes are being careful for what you wish and not all things are as they seem.