Paul Magrs bought me coraline on audio for Christmas and after listening to it i think it'd be an excellent thing to teach in school. i am a secondary school teacher and i am sick of being made to teach the same old crap over and over again. I want to teach Coraline. Do you think the publishers would do me a deal ona cheap set of texts??

Anyway i thought Coraline was really interesting and exciting, though even as a twenty something i was scared by the images in my head of the button eyes!

Anyone else think it'd be a good book for school?

Cheers Neil, you made my Christmas.

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Originally posted by Ann:
Paul Magrs bought me coraline on audio for Christmas and after listening to it i think it'd be an excellent thing to teach in school. i am a secondary school teacher and i am sick of being made to teach the same old crap over and over again. I want to teach Coraline. Do you think the publishers would do me a deal ona cheap set of texts??

Anyway i thought Coraline was really interesting and exciting, though even as a twenty something i was scared by the images in my head of the button eyes!

Anyone else think it'd be a good book for school?

Cheers Neil, you made my Christmas.

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I was a teaching assisstant for second and fifth graders, and I read Coraline to both classes -- they loved it. My Mom, who is a second grade teacher, used it as a novel study. It's a wonderful book for class. It's different and doesn't patronize children the way so many books for kids do. In our school, we were discouraged in reading any of the Harry Potter books to our classes because of the possible Xian outrage that was so talked about in the media -- so we filled the kids' heads with things like Coraline, the Oz books (which are pretty dark and scary, really), John Bellairs (horror and mystery for children), Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials series), Roald Dahl (especially the Witches and Matilda), Jane Yolen, and whatever else we discovered or were recommended. The fifth graders loved The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Pratchett), but the second graders didn't really get it.

Strangely enough, both of my classes were utterly bored with the Alice books. I didn't even read Through the Looking Glass to the second graders, because they boo'ed when I suggested it after having listened to Adventures in Wonderland. Teeheehee.

I don't know how it would go over in secondary school -- to me, older kids need a challenge, and there are several things Neil's done that would be more appropriate for that. A good friend, who is a high school english teacher, taught some Harlan Ellison ("Repent, Harlequin . . . " being the one I remember), which is something to which they really responded.

Maure.

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eurydice underground: a miscellany
Obfuscations and Inconsequentials: a journal

It would be great for Primary school I think, but if you're looking to teach it at secondary level I'd make really sure you have a class that will appreciate it. Try to find the clas full of nutters. Have to say, I'd rather have done Coraline than Animal Farm at GCSE...

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'I'm insane. What's his excuse?'

Slightly straying from the subject, how do you guys think it would go over as a Book Club book for teens? Would they feel it was too young for them and not realize that it works for adults too?

Thanks,
amy

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ARTHUR: By what name are you known?
AMY: There are some who call me... 'Amy'?
ARTHUR: Greetings, Amy of Doom.
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Originally posted by aitapata:
Slightly straying from the subject, how do you guys think it would go over as a Book Club book for teens? Would they feel it was too young for them and not realize that it works for adults too?

Thanks,
amy

*****************************
ARTHUR: By what name are you known?
AMY: There are some who call me... 'Amy'?
ARTHUR: Greetings, Amy of Doom.
*****************************

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I think they might be too old for it, and not old enough to be able to enjoy it for what it is. I would go with Neverwhere or Smoke and Mirrors, myself. Although, you'll always have a handful of teens who would like it, you know?

Maure

______________________________
eurydice underground: a miscellany
Obfuscations and Inconsequentials: a journal

ditto-ing Neverwhere as good for teens - my ex-mother-in-law is a high school english teacher, and one of her students is a huge fan of the book aparently

Thanks for the thoughts. I do know some younger teens who read Coraline and loved it, but they're complete Neil Gaiman fans and would love anything by him. I guess it's too specialized to have broad appeal for the teenage range.

Thanks again,
amy

*****************************
ARTHUR: By what name are you known?
AMY: There are some who call me... 'Amy'?
ARTHUR: Greetings, Amy of Doom.
*****************************

Damn, I wish my school had taught Ellsion.

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It's different and doesn't patronize children the way so many books for kids do.

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I agree. It's the same with most children's film and television - most take the intellect of children for granted.

Hi--I am a teacher, too I teach 6th and 7th grade English. I actually wrote a sample essay on Coraline to pass out to my kiddos as a sample I have also read it out loud many times to groups of summer school classes. They always love it.
The teachers have a middle school book club, where we read books that are middle school level and meet up to discuss them. My friend and I suggested Coraline and naturally all the old biddies who like the boring crap we usually do didn't like it Typical of some of those ladies, though--they like their books precious and twee or just plain dull. One lady complained that it sounded like a second grader wrote it! I guess she just didn't get it.
But I always give it to kids who struggle with reading or don't like books and they love it. Sadly though, they don't have any other Gaiman to read because for those kids, his other stuff is a bit advanced. For my gifted kids--I push Stardust and Neverwhere, as well.

This surprise some of you who have been talking about using Coraline for grade school use but in my ENG 386 class at Clemson Univeristy in SC, USA we read it along with Terry Pratchett's "The Amzing Maurice and His Educated Rodents." In fact, we had the option of teaching a novel and I, along witht wo other women, tuaght it to the class. Some of us even used Corlaine for our end of the semester research papers. I was the only one who had really heard of Neil and I was dubbed teh "expert" int he class even though I by no means knew everything there was to know about the book.

Random blurb in an old topic....

In 6th grade I read Coraline and absolutely loved it, and then in 10th grade proceeded to find out that it was by Neil Gaiman, the writer of the book I happened to be reading at that time, American Gods, one I think some of you may have heard of. :P

I also just found out that, if Wiki and IMDB are correct, Neil and I share a birthday!

Here I am - passed through the corridor into the "other" board again.

I just read Coraline, really enjoyed it, but it scared the fuck out of me.

I have a 9-year old son, and I know that it would really scare him - he's more emotionally fragile than most children - and I think that for a lot of 3rd graders it might be too disturbing.

I just read it too, on the outgoing leg of my trip to San Francisco. I enjoyed it, but it didn't register as all that scary to me -- although the closet encounter and the return trip towards her true apartment were pretty freaky. Maybe it was the time of day.

I'm not sure how a kid would take it -- I don't know that I could get either of my sons to read it, being about a girl and all; it probably would be a bit freaky for my 10-year old (although they're reading Return of the King in her class currently.)

It scared me, the first time I read it. But I read it to Devlin last winter and he just loved it. He was 7. So far he doesn't seem to mind hearing stories about girls - he really enjoyed the Tiffany Aching books, too.