| $@%&! level: None “Bedroom” level: None Violence level: Low (but creepy) Back Cover: “When Coraline explores her new home, she steps through a door and into another house just like her own...except that it's different. It's a marvelous adventure until Coraline discovers that there's also another mother and another father in the house. They want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to keep her forever! Coraline must use all of her wits and every ounce of courage in order to save herself and return home.” |
I think this story wouldn't have worked if Coraline hadn't been so clever. Outsmarting the beldam was maybe not all that difficult, at least once she discovered the correct way to use her stone with a hole in it. But she has a good head for remembering things she's told and putting them together. And apparently she's pretty good at dissembling as well. It's like Coraline and the beldam are sort of equally matched, both playing this game but neither one of them with any intention of keeping their bargain if they lose. I think the game was sort of a delaying action for Coraline, and also let her search for the lost children and her parents. The beldam seems like she just couldn't help herself. But the most impressive and clever thing that Coraline does isn't really in finding her parents or winning the game—it's in resisting temptation. It's in understanding that what she thought she wanted is actually not good for her, and that even though she'll go on saying she wants it, she knows that she doesn't really. For a child—perhaps especially a clever child—that's really insightful, and I admire her for it.
Incidentally, if you're the kind of person who enjoys knowing where authors get these kind of things, the beldam is based on a poem by Keats, La Belle Dame Sans Merci. In the poem she was more interested in handsome knights than in children, but it was basically the same routine.