In fact, reading the graphic novel was very much like watching Coraline as a movie, only where the dialogue is in subtitles and not spoken aloud. Both the images and the text merge to tell the story in an extremely terrific way. This graphic novel finds the right balance between image and text, between action and speech. The balance between dialogue and imagery is just exactly right (unlike, say, the version of The Hobbit at the local library, which is so darned text-heavy in dialogue bubbles as to render the entire thing unreadable, in my opinion). The souls of the three children in the closet in the Other House are rendered well (and clearly demonstrate the time periods/species to which the children belong). Russell even makes Coraline seem to stand a bit taller as the book moves along, and the images of the Other Mother (who likes to sew buttons for eyes, brrrrr**) are decidedly frightening, as they should be. Mind you, the Coraline in this version looks nothing like the Coraline on the cover of the original novel* (as drawn by David McKean), nor does she look anything like the Coraline who will be in the forthcoming 3D movie version of the book.* BUT in some ways, I like her all the more for it, because she looks like a real girl, and not like a cartoon(ish) character. Only last week, I spied it with my little eye in the children's section at Borders. Only I didn't talk about it until now on account of its official release date is sometime in July. You can bet, I read it pretty much immediately. And then I squeed about scoring a copy of the ARC for the graphic novel version at ALA.

Or skip this post, but you'll be missing out if you do it.) Regular readers may reacall that in my post for Bradbury Season, I noted that a graphic novel version was forthcoming, illustrated by P. But I'm a huge Gaiman fan, so you shall have to suck it up.

(And yes, I know I only recently raved about his picture book, The Dangerous Alphabet, illustrated by Gris Grimly. KellyrfinemanSome of you may remember that I raved about Neil Gaiman's book Coraline as part of a multi-blog event last year.

Coraline the graphic novel neil gaiman