Coraline

What is your favorite time of day?

Really, really early in the morning, just as the sun is coming up. I don’t see it too often, but I love it when I do.

Have you ever had your fortune told?

Once, while waiting for a theater to open in New York, by an old woman. She told me I would die on an island. It hasn’t happened yet.

Will there be a film of Coraline?

Quite possibly. The film rights have been bought, and Henry Selick, who is most famous for directing The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, has written the script and plans to direct it.

So many of my stories have been bought by Hollywood that I’ve long since stopped expecting any of them actually to happen, and will simply be pleasantly surprised if any of them actually do.

Will you write another children’s book?

Yes. The next one I want to write has a working title of The Graveyard Book.

A NOTE ON WORKING WITH

DAVE McKEAN

I’VE KNOWN DAVE MCKEAN for hundreds of years now. Almost twenty, anyway. When we met I was a young journalist, and he was an even younger art student.

We’ve made comics together (Black Orchid, Mr. Punch, Violent Cases, Signal to Noise). He did the covers for the Sandman comics and books (collected in a book called Dustcovers). We’ve done a children’s picture book (The Day I Swapped My Dad for 2 Goldfish), which proved so popular in certain quarters that Dave redid the book cover as a CD cover, and it was on the side of buses all over the world. We have another picture book, called The Wolves in the Walls, which will come out when Dave finishes the drawings.

This is why Dave McKean has illustrated Coraline.

When I finished Coraline I needed some guinea pigs to read it. Dave has a daughter named Yolanda. (He also has a son named Liam and a wife named Clare, but they don’t come into this explanation, except in this sentence, where they don’t do very much, even though in real life Clare plays the violin and Liam runs in and out of rooms wearing different hats to surprise you.) Dave read Coraline to Yolanda, who decided that it was her favorite book, and that she wanted it to be the theme of her birthday party.

So the invitation to Yolanda’s birthday party was the picture of the Mouse Circus that finishes this book.

When Dave e-mailed that drawing to me, I knew that I wanted him to do the rest of the pictures.

Which, to my great delight, he did. And the pictures are very creepy, and very odd and very true. He even went to the house I used to live in, in Nutley, Sussex, and drew it.

I like working with Dave, and hope he keeps drawing things I write forever.

About the Author

NEIL GAIMAN is the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of the novels AMERICAN GODS, NEVERWHERE, STARDUST (winner of the American Library Association’s Alex Award as one of 2000’s top ten adult novels for young adults), the short fiction collection SMOKE AND MIRRORS, and the children’s book THE DAY I SWAPPED MY DAD FOR 2 GOLDFISH (illustrated by Dave McKean). He is also the author of the Sandman series of graphic novels. Among his many awards are the World Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award. Originally from England, Gaiman now lives in the United States.

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Credits

Jacket art © 2002 by Dave McKean

Jacket design by Hilary Zarycky

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

CORALINE. Text copyright © 2002 by Neil Gaiman. Illustrations copyright © 2002 by Dave McKean. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Mobipocket Reader November 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-077365-6

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About the Publisher

Australia

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