Coraline Week 1/4

Summary p1-22, Discussion Questions, Foreshadowing, Writing prompt

Summary p1-22

Hello reader! Welcome to For the Love of Words, your gracious learning community. Welcome to a new month and new book! For the month of October we are going to deep dive into the eerie, surreal, suspenseful, and magical world of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. I can honestly think of no better book for this spooky season.

This book is a novella, meaning the page count is below a “typical” novel length. Novella’s hover around 100 pages and Coraline definitely fits the bill. But more than length, a novella is somewhere between a short story and a novel. Meaning there is no fluff, no words are wasted, but it can develop and satisfy like a novel can. The novella, like the theme of this book is between two worlds. Something we will be getting waaaay more into in the coming weeks.

Coraline (not Caroline) moves into a new house and has some time to spare before school starts. Prone to boredom and adventure she is most at peace when she is exploring the world around her. Her parents are kind, but not very attentive, which allows Coraline to slump around on rainy days, and acquire perhaps too much curiosity.

On one of her adventures, within her own home noless, she discovers a door. When she walks through it strange things begin to happen. Simple enough, right? While short, and easy to follow, this book is jam packed with literary devices, themes large and small, and plenty of opportunities to be inspired. In this post we will start with some discussion questions, we’ll cover foreshadowing, and offer a short story writing prompt.

Let’s begin!