20 Bad Books To Give To Young Kids

LAS VEGAS, NV – JANUARY 11: A glasses-free Toshiba 55-inch 3-D 4x full HD TV shows the movie, ‘Coraline’ at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center January 11, 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The TVs are scheduled to be available this year and will come with embedded cameras with facial recognition capability so depending on where you are sitting, the set will adjust the viewing point for the best 3-D experience. CES, the world’s largest annual consumer technology trade show, runs through January 13 and features more than 3,100 exhibitors showing off their latest products and services to about 140,000 attendees. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

4. Coraline

This one is, to be fair, a little expected. If you’re at all familiar with the work of author Neil Gaiman, then you know that he’s unafraid of going for the truly dark and strange sides of fiction. He wrote the comic series, Sandman, after all, which is a darkly beautiful tale of myths, death, dreams, and the hidden world all around us.

Coraline, his 2002 children’s novella, is much in the same vein. In it, young Coraline Jones moves into an old house with her parents. The house has been divided into flats, and so is occupied by other tenants. These include two elderly stage actors, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, and Mr. Bobo, a retired circus man who’s training a mouse circus.

One day, Coraline finds a mysterious door that appears to connect with an empty apartment next to hers. Upon opening it, however, her family finds that it’s been bricked up. When she’s alone, she reopens to door to find that it leads to a copy of her home. It’s populated by her “Other Mother” and “Other Father”, who first appear to be the same except for one big difference – they have large black buttons instead of eyes. Her toys move and talk on her own in this Other World, while her neighbors are more interesting performers. A feral black cat, seen in the normal world, can talk in this one and serves as her guide.

When she returns to the normal world, Coraline discovers that her parents are gone. The black cat soon reveals that they are trapped in the Other World, thanks to the machinations of the Other Mother. Everything turns about fine, but along the way Coraline has to deal with ghost children, a disembodied hand, and the terrifying true form of the Other Mother.