by JULIET WATERS

I wonder about kids these days, and whether they’re really happier now that their parents are watching their movies and reading their books. Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, recently compared writing contemporary children’s literature to being “a rock star in the ’60s… It’s a time when children’s literature is part of the Zeitgeist.” Yeah—except that rock was about kids getting some distance from their parents. How much of the children’s literature Zeitgeist is about parents not being able to tolerate distance from their children? I wonder if kids don’t sometimes find this a little creepy.

Coraline is exactly the kind of book that adults will love as much as children. Its creepy, surreal, lurid horror rivals anything you’d find in David Lynch. It will bring any adult immediately back to the first time they read Roald Dahl or C.S. Lewis. By comparison, Harry Potter is a Saturday morning cartoon. It is so scary that many adults will probably think kids shouldn’t read it on their own. They’ll want to read it to them and explain, discuss it and thereby miss its implicit message: that kids sometimes need to be neglected.

Coraline is a girl of indeterminate age. She is old enough to be bored with all her videos, books and toys. She is old enough to microwave her own mini-pizza in protest against her father’s “recipe” food, i.e., anything with herbs or stinky cheese. But she is young enough to be lonely and hurt by her parents’ self-absorption. On a very rainy day, in a very old, very big house that has been turned into apartments, Coraline’s work-at-home parents are at their computers and have little time for her. So Coraline goes exploring.

With a nod to Alice in Wonderland, Coraline ends up lost in another world behind a door that was supposedly bricked over during the renovation of the house. She even meets a talking cat. But this other world is a distorted mirror of her own. Here there is no end to interesting things. Her bedroom closet is filled with exciting dress-up clothes, her books have pictures that writhe and crawl, her toys are alive. And her “Other” parents, as they like to refer to themselves, seem to want nothing more than to be with her.

Problem is her Other parents are ghouls who want to steal her soul. Even without their pallour and glassy black eyes, Coraline senses there is something sick about them, something bogus about their grandly professed love. Her immediate instinct is to get far away and never return. But when she discovers that they’ve kidnapped her real parents, she must go back.

Gaiman is a master fantasy writer. His Sandman series (also illustrated by Dave McKean) are some of the most innovative, intelligent graphic novels ever written. And last year his novel American Gods was a critical and commercial success. But this children’s story seems to be coming from a different place than just the need to tell a scary tale. This little book is a true classic. The archetype of the narcissistic parent, self-absorbed in one world, needy and grasping in another, should mesmerize many readers for generations to come.

Fortunately, Coraline can tell the difference between sick narcissism and human, run of the mill, narcissism. In an effort to woo her over to the other side, the Other Mother tries to convince Coraline that her real parents are already thinking of all the wonderful trips and freedoms they can enjoy now that she’s gone. But Coraline knows this isn’t true. No matter what her parents’ failings, she knows instinctively that their love is real.

The best children’s books are always as interesting to adults as they are to children. Yet, hopefully, Coraline will not become part of the Zeitgeist. It seems better left on a shelf to be discovered on a rainy, boring, lonely day by some fortunately neglected child. :

Coraline by Neil Gaiman, illus. by Dave McKean,
HarperCollins, hc, 162pp, $23.99