The Other-Books

I’ve been often told that books I read are weird. So, I thought it would be a good idea to have some space for some of these books, which sometimes never get picked up from the shelves except maybe by children.

One such weird, strange, unrealistic yet awesome book is Coraline. Please note – NOT CAROLINE BUT CORALINE.

Read it and I am sure, you would relate to the little dark haired gangly girl who does not like rains too much but loves exploring despite not being a huge fan of fantasy as a genre.

She stumbles on to this other-world, which is just like the real world except that it is SO MUCH BETTER. Everything is just right in the other-world. Her room is beautiful. Her toy box is full of toys which actually move and talk.

Even the other-parents are perfect. They have time to spend with the Coraline. The other-mother makes wonderful food; the other-father is fun. They are the parents any child would want except for one small glitch- there are black buttons in place of their eyes.
Now you must be wondering where is the “relation” here.

Don’t we all at one time or the other wish to escape into a better world. Where things are just the way you want them to be. INTERESTING. FUN. PERFECT.

Well, that is what she found in the other-world. But there has to be a catch somewhere. And the catch here was that if she wanted to stay in that world she would have to accept the other-mother and other-father as her real parents AND let them sew buttons on her eyes.
Again the “relation”– however much we look forward to the perfect wrld, we deep down inside don’t want to give up our funny little imperfect world. Do we? And definitely not give up our eyes and souls as barter.

So Coraline decides to take matters in her own hands and saves the three trapped souls in the other world, her parents who have been kidnapped by the other-parents with the help of a black cat which can talk in the other-world and a seeing-stone which has been given to her by her neighbours – Miss April Spink and Miss Miriam Forcible – a pair of retired actresses.

I don’t want to give out too much of the details of the story. It has to be read to be enjoyed.

Apart from the story, the book is filled with very interesting characters – like the actresses and how they forsee dangers in Coraline’s future, Mr. Bobo the circus man who claims to be training mice for a performance, the ghost children whose souls have been stolen and hidden by the other-parents and of course the bug-eating other-mother.

And if you have imagination it is a visual treat.

The movie is nice too but there are a lot of deviations from the original book and I as a loyal reader should, prefer the book any day!

Oh and by-the-way !! Despite my confession about hating scary books, this is one scary book that I do like. Yeah.. it is scary 
So go ahead! IF you don’t mind giving in to your imagination. Dive into the other-world for one sweet fun-filled swim!! Do let me know you liked it.

See you on the other side soon.

~ Geetanjali Joshi