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Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
AN UNRECOGNIZED CLASSIC
The transition from the page to the screen can result in disappointment for those familiar with the source. I thought of this recently while viewing Watchmen (not appropriate for young children), which has been unfavorably reviewed on the basis of that kind of comparison.
I liked it. Maybe it’s apples and oranges. Movies and books are, after all, wholly separate entities.
But that’s too bad for kids in too many cases, who often don’t read the book because they have seen the movie.
Film adaptations by necessity can’t encompass the nuances of a book. The movie Because of Winn-Dixie is disappointingly bland when compared with Kate DiCamillo’s extraordinary novel. Some young readers, however, will miss out on the superior experience because they watched the video.
While I loved the movie Coraline, I felt that inserting a boy as a major character and taking the setting out of England were boring and condescending concessions to what Hollywood conceives of as the mass audience.
Coraline should not be from Michigan and should not move to Oregon. She should be a solitary child who relies on herself and her own imagination to resolve her problems. Children who have only seen the movie will be stuck with horrid misconceptions.
Because True Grit, with its iconic performance by John Wayne, is now history, this is an opportune time to read the exceptional story by Charles Portis that served as the basis for that film. Younger readers unfamiliar with the movie can come to the book with fresh eyes and without preconceptions.
And what a book it is. Portis tells the tale in the voice of Mattie Ross, an unbelievably strong, engaging female protagonist, and his language and ability to get totally inside Mattie's head are astounding.
More than that, the story concerns the rollicking adventures of fourteen-year-old Mattie avenging her father's death in frontier America. The non-stop action will leave the reader breathless.
Beyond a great narrative, young readers will learn a lot about America in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Portis is a true appreciator of our tradition of tall tales, and introduces us to a delightfully dilapidated bunch of rusty but tough old coots who make up the remnants of what was the Wild West. There’s even a cameo appearance by Jesse James’s brother Frank.
George Pelecanos, no slouch as a writer himself, labeled True Grit “a book you hope parents read to their kids,” and says, “Mattie's voice, wry and sure, is one of the great creations of modern American fiction. I put it up there with Huck Finn's, and that is not hyperbole. In fact, I find True Grit to be one of the very best American novels.”
He’s right.
I liked it. Maybe it’s apples and oranges. Movies and books are, after all, wholly separate entities.
But that’s too bad for kids in too many cases, who often don’t read the book because they have seen the movie.
Film adaptations by necessity can’t encompass the nuances of a book. The movie Because of Winn-Dixie is disappointingly bland when compared with Kate DiCamillo’s extraordinary novel. Some young readers, however, will miss out on the superior experience because they watched the video.
While I loved the movie Coraline, I felt that inserting a boy as a major character and taking the setting out of England were boring and condescending concessions to what Hollywood conceives of as the mass audience.
Coraline should not be from Michigan and should not move to Oregon. She should be a solitary child who relies on herself and her own imagination to resolve her problems. Children who have only seen the movie will be stuck with horrid misconceptions.
Because True Grit, with its iconic performance by John Wayne, is now history, this is an opportune time to read the exceptional story by Charles Portis that served as the basis for that film. Younger readers unfamiliar with the movie can come to the book with fresh eyes and without preconceptions.
And what a book it is. Portis tells the tale in the voice of Mattie Ross, an unbelievably strong, engaging female protagonist, and his language and ability to get totally inside Mattie's head are astounding.
More than that, the story concerns the rollicking adventures of fourteen-year-old Mattie avenging her father's death in frontier America. The non-stop action will leave the reader breathless.
Beyond a great narrative, young readers will learn a lot about America in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Portis is a true appreciator of our tradition of tall tales, and introduces us to a delightfully dilapidated bunch of rusty but tough old coots who make up the remnants of what was the Wild West. There’s even a cameo appearance by Jesse James’s brother Frank.
George Pelecanos, no slouch as a writer himself, labeled True Grit “a book you hope parents read to their kids,” and says, “Mattie's voice, wry and sure, is one of the great creations of modern American fiction. I put it up there with Huck Finn's, and that is not hyperbole. In fact, I find True Grit to be one of the very best American novels.”
He’s right.
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