I actually read Coraline first to a real audience in 1999, back when the book itself was less than half-written, at a Comic Book Legal Defense Fund members-only reception at the San Diego comic convention. It was a late-night reading, in a conference room, of Coraline (what there was of it) and The Wolves in the Walls to a bunch of people who have now been waiting patiently for some years. Here's a review from one of them: Needcoffee.com Word Bomb: Coraline