Coraline

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

How can building friendships and having allies be important or valuable? Define the difference between a friend and an ally. In what circumstances might an ally be needed more than a friend? Describe your friends and your allies; are they the same people? What would you do if you needed an ally but found you did not have one?

Teaching Suggestion: Coraline, the protagonist of the novel, finds herself in a difficult situation when she encounters the other mother, a replica of her own mother with sinister intent. Coraline forms allies and friendships in the novel to help her overcome adversity. Consider encouraging students to think about and discuss the importance of friendship and allies in times of hardship. You may wish to access the following resources to help facilitate the discussion:

• This article examines and presents research on how friendships help middle school students navigate life's ups and downs.
• This article summarizes research that illuminates the alliance-based foundations of friendships.

Short Activity

Use discussion questions to define bravery, what it looks like, and ways to achieve it.

• In what situations might people need to be brave?
• What are things that cause people to be afraid?
• What is the best way to cope with fear?
• Is bravery the absence of fear?
• Who are people—fictional or real—who are seen as brave?
• How does someone become more brave?

Teaching Suggestion: One way to use the discussion questions might be to divide students into two lines facing one another and provide a time limit for each of the students to respond to the question and/or discuss it with the person across from them. Students can rotate in opposite directions after each question to engage with other students and develop an understanding of how other classmates view bravery.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the novel.

Describe what your life would be like if you were able to achieve and/or receive all that you have ever wanted. How would your home and family look? How might your schoolwork and friendships shift? How would the rules in your household change? What kinds of things would you possess? How would your feelings and emotions differ from before? Would your goals and ambitions change? If so, how?

Teaching Suggestion: Coraline wrestles with the things her parents want her to do, her boredom, and her interactions—or lack of interactions—with her parents. Her life drastically changes when she meets the other mother, who seems to promise Coraline all that she is lacking in life. Consider encouraging students to discuss their dreams and desires and hypothesize some of the pitfalls that might arise when someone achieves or gets everything they want.

Differentiation Suggestion: For students who demonstrate interpersonal or intrapersonal intelligences or even naturalistic intelligence, it may prove beneficial to allow them to examine social-emotional research that categorizes the schemas of contentment and happiness or scientifically investigates the parameters and levels of happiness. A TED-Ed talk like this one may be a good starting point for these students. Students may also benefit from demonstrating their learnings on happiness in a series of visual images and captions that they present during the unit.