Coraline by Neil Gaiman (2002)

This book is about Coraline. She has moved into a new house that has a mysterious door that leads to no where. Her parents are very busy and Coraline gets extremely bored on her own. One day, the mysterious door opens and it leads to a life that is much better than her own. As she spends time there, she begins to find out that something strange is going on and that the new parents want to permanently change her. She fights back to save herself and the other children that are trapped there.

I really enjoyed this book. I had seen this movie and thought it was okay, so I was looking forward to reading this book. I liked the book much better than the movie. I thought it was written very well and I really liked the illustrations at the beginning of every chapter. Having the image before the chapter made it fun to try to predict what would happen next.

I would use this book in my classroom. I think it would be good to use as a free read book. I also think it would be a good book to read out loud. When reading out loud, students could look at the pictures given at the beginning of each chapter to predict what would happen next. I would also use this book to compare it to the movie so students could compare and contrast.