By Neil Gaiman
Coraline unlocks a bricked-up door in her family's new apartment and steps into an almost-perfect copy of home, where an Other Mother with black buttons sewn over her eyes wants her to stay forever.
Coraline Jones has just moved into an old house split into apartments, and her parents are always working. One rainy, boring day she opens a door that's usually bricked shut and finds a passage into an Other version of her home. There an Other Mother and Other Father are delighted to see her: they make her favorite meals, hand her marvelous toys, and beg her to stay. One thing is wrong. Where their eyes should be, both of them have big black buttons sewn into their faces. The Other Mother says Coraline can live here always, if she'll just let them sew buttons over her own eyes too. Coraline says no, and the smiling stops. Now her real parents have vanished, three ghost children are pleading for help from behind a mirror, and Coraline has to outwit something that has no intention of ever letting her leave.
This is one of the scariest books on the whole trail, and that's the point of putting it here. The fear comes from something being almost exactly right and then horribly wrong, which is far worse than any ordinary monster. Gaiman writes it beautifully, and Coraline herself is worth cheering for: brave, stubborn, and solving the whole thing on her own with no adult to rescue her. A strong reader who wants to be frightened gets a real book and a real scare at once. It's a modern classic that trusts a child to handle genuine dread.