7-123H2643c11-89-25-269-205-269-149 0-242 121-242 265 0 155 106 coraline welcome home cake 246 274 79 0 169-56 209-130l-14-17zm-211-343c51 0 82 64 86 176h-182. She looks just like your mother.

Except she has big, black buttons for eyes. Or else she has glass eyes that glint in the dark. Or maybe a tail made of heavy, dark wood. And if you’re not careful, she’ll keep you for good. The story follows young Coraline Jones. While exploring one day, she finds a bricked up door in her family’s new apartment.

Only, it’s not bricked up when Coraline opens it — and through the door she finds an Other World, almost exactly like her own world. In her Other apartment there is her Other Mother, who has buttons for eyes. This Other Mother is more fun than Coraline’s real mother at first but then it becomes clear that she wants Coraline to stay with her. But Gaiman is far from the first to notice that fake mothers have the potential to be monstrous. So the story’s been around for quite some time. There are two sisters, Blue-Eyes and Turkey.

Blue-Eyes, in every version of the story, has blue eyes. While out one day, the sisters meet a strange girl with an even stranger instrument. She calls it a “peardrum,” and she says there is a little man and a little woman inside. If she plays the peardrum, they come out and dance, and the woman tells a secret. The sisters want to see the little people dance, but the girl says that she only shows them to naughty children.