Coraline: Chapters 1–5

There was also a haughty black cat, who sat on walls and tree stumps and watched her but slipped away if ever she went over to try to play with it.

Coraline could hear a frenzied woofing as the Scottie dogs ran out into the hall.

On the mantelpiece, was a small jar, and Miss Spink took off the top of the jar and began to pull things out of it.

There were all sorts of remarkable things in there she’d never seen before: windup angels that fluttered around the bedroom like startled sparrows; books with pictures that writhed and crawled and shimmered; little dinosaur skulls that chattered their teeth as she passed.

Half of her wanted to be very rude to it; the other half of her wanted to be polite and deferential.

Coraline edged forward into a small anteroom.

“Possibly,” said Coraline, who was not going to be diverted, “but I am ringing to report a crime.”

“I think my other mother has them both in her clutches. She may want to keep them and sew their eyes with black buttons, or she may simply have them in order to lure me back into reach of her fingers. I’m not sure.”
“Ah. The nefarious clutches of her fiendish fingers, is it?” he said.

“I think my other mother has them both in her clutches. She may want to keep them and sew their eyes with black buttons, or she may simply have them in order to lure me back into reach of her fingers. I’m not sure.”
“Ah. The nefarious clutches of her fiendish fingers, is it?” he said.

Its tone remained sarcastic, but its fur was bristling, and its brush of a tail stuck up in the air.

She put out one hand...and felt something wispy, like a spider’s web, brush her hands and her face.

Coraline pulled back, and the other mother let her go, with reluctance.

And she took an apple from her dressing-gown pocket, then bit into it with relish and an enthusiasm that she did not really feel.

“You must not bother our darling Coraline’s head with such trivialities.”

Coraline walked into the green-and-pink parody of her own bedroom.