This boredom is the catalyst for the horror that follows. It is a testament to Gaiman’s writing that the story validates a child’s frustration while simultaneously terrifying them with the consequences of that frustration. Coraline is an explorer because she has nothing else to do. When she finds the small, bricked-up door in the drawing room of her new home, the decrepit Pink Palace Apartments, she is acting on a very human impulse: the desire for something more.