Coraline

Eeek...yes I am a little behind and that is probably an understatement...but that's life and it gets busy. If I stay as busy as I currently am in the future, I fear that I won't be as good at this blogging thing as I would like to be. Anyways, in class last week we were asked to pick a graphic novel for our reading groups, and due to the fact that Coraline was out at just about every library in the county, it would probably be a good investment and addition to my own library. Anyways, I really enjoyed the book, and I finished it in two sittings. Obviously the nice thing about graphic novels is that they are all visual and so it's quick, also I am much more of a visual learner so it was easy for me to connect the different plot points. I brought it to work to get some reading in during my lunch break, and the student I work with grabbed it out of my purse and took it to his lunchtime with him. He loved looking at the pictures, and he is a reader as well so he was definitely entertained by it. When that happened I realized that graphic novels could be a really useful tool with students who have special needs--I mean anyone could enjoy it but especially students who learn in the more non-traditional ways. 


 The storyline itself has a creepy feel with interesting little twists in the story. Neil Gaiman, the author of the graphic novel Coraline, wrote This fictitious suspense story which intrigued my student who is 7, though the book is thought to fit readers of 8 years or older. I don't think it is scary necessarily...the plot is based on this family who moves to new town in an old house, and Coraline is the curious, and bored only child. She decided to explore one day, and found herself further away from her parents in her own home than she could ever imagine. Okay, I guess the characters such as the "Other Mother", who wants to sew buttons into Coraline's eyes could star in a few of my own nightmares, but the story was written in a way that was very suspenseful, the characters were well developed and the book kept you wanting to know what was coming next.


As far as using the story in the classroom, I would use it with an older audience, maybe 3rd or 4th graders, but mainly for leisurely reading as it is a graphic novel. Also, for students at lower level learning in 3rd grade or above, I would allow the students to use the book for comprehension purposes if they could get more from the graphics in comparison to the text. There is much to take from the visuals as well, and P. Craig Russel uses different color schemes to create an ambiance to each page of the novel. As a pre-activity, the students could think about what it would feel like to move into a new town, and a new home. They could use creative writing to imagine as though tomorrow their families were moving, and what kind of changes would they feel in the moving process. Later they could portray Coraline's story and what she had imagined with what things went right and what things went wrong They could reflect on the graphic novel through summarizing, painting a symbolic picture or story mapping the events.