Daniel makes stuff, and, in his spare time, writes about things like movies, kid culture, and geek stuff.
"A Souped-up Picture Book"

Thoughts from Christopher Harris on what Apple’s iPad might mean for school libraries and the future of children’s reading.

The critical question for me right now is whether […] children would select a traditional, printed volume or a digitally enriched electronic version. Not what we would select, but what our students would choose. We know children aren’t born with the love and respect we have for print books; consider volumes from your own collection, which young ones have drawn in, gnawed upon, or otherwise destroyed. So why are we often so intent on imposing our preferences on our students?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Apple iPad since, well, long before it was announced – and the possibilities for how it will revolutionise literacy are immense. More relevantly, I don’t think any of us really know how kids are going to interact with the device, and what it will be like to grow up reading digitally. I’ve taken a few stabs at pondering this future (including in the Talkback for Christopher’s post, and a few unfinished essays about it), but I always stop myself short simply due to the awesome, far-reaching potential.

It’s fascinating to think about, and I don’t think we’re giving near enough prescience to to the quiet revolution that is about to take place.

Mar 02, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

J.K. Rowling's Being Sued for Plagiarism Again

Some great insights into how children’s book authors, like Rowling, create their literary worlds – and why it’s the execution, not the ideas, that matters.

One of my favourite bits, appreciable by creators of every ilk:

“People who aren’t accustomed to having a lot of ideas of their own have a very poor grasp of the odds that others might independently come up with the same ideas.”

(Via the Children’s Bookshelf.)

Feb 20, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Dear Chris Columbus...

“Please, please stop sucking the life out of beloved children’s literature.”

I just saw ‘The Lightning Thief’ and am reading the script right now, so that I can critique the film without being too harsh on the screenwriter before reading his original writing. I have a long list of things now that are wrong with the film, and unfortunately they’re things that are needlessly wrong too – cinematic moments from the book that felt made for the big screen, yet oddly, inexplicably absent in the movie… or worse, explained away in a tidy line of dialogue. This is not, let’s make clear, how to do a book adaptation.

The bottom line? Wow, Chris Columbus really knows how to ruin an otherwise really, really good book series.

Feb 12, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

'Percy Jackson: My Boy's Own Adventure'

A discussion with Rick Riordan, author of the “Percy Jackson” series, and his son Haley, who has dyslexia and ADHD and whom the character of Percy is based on.

Feb 09, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

"Our Future Depends on Children's Books"

An interesting independent TEDxOttawa Talk from Mark Blevis, who looks at how the future is shaped by children’s books:

Much of what we become is shaped by the ideas we’re exposed to and the relationships of which we’re a part. The stronger those foundations are from childhood, the better equipped we are to understand the people with whom we interact and the world around us. Children’s books are the tools that help us open the door to a child’s natural curiosity, creativity and desire to connect, and are one of our strongest hopes for a great future.

Feb 01, 2010 :: Tagged under: , :: #

Publishers Weekly's Best Children's Books of 2009

Publisher’s Weekly:

From accounts of civil rights heroes, to harrowing (and hopeful) stories about contemporary teenagers, to picture books that perfectly capture friendship, curiosity, or flights of fancy, 2009 held a treasure trove of wonderful reading for children of all ages and interests.

It’s true, 2009 was a very good year for books.

Nov 21, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Hoppy Legs and Twitchy Noses

Two things:

1. There is something absolutely wonderful about E.R. Bird’s review of Emily Gravett’s picture book “Wolves.” Take, for instance, Bird’s description of the book’s alternative ending – provided kindly by Gavett, since the original ending, she notes in the book, might be a bit gruesome for “sensitive readers” (caution: spoilers afoot!):

But rather than draw an additional scene for the last part of the book, Gravett does something pretty clever. We see the rabbit and the wolf chowing down on a hitherto unmentioned jam sandwich together. The thing is, Gravett has taken a great deal of care to show a spread that squeamish parents will buy as a legitimate ending, and intelligent children will not.

I suppose to put it into context, though, you have to read the book. Which leads me to…

2. There’s something even more wonderful about Emily Gravett’s picture book “Wolves” itself.

Sporting a terrifically clever and funny story, “Wolves” is also matched with simply pitch-perfect mixed-media illustrations: ones that reveal a story-within-a-story, as an intellectually curious rabbit borrows a book from the “burrowing” library that is all about wolves. As the rabbit reads all about wolves, though (sharing rather matter-of-factly his newfound information with the reader), the illustrations show something vastly different: the wolf in question that the rabbit reads about, we see, has seemingly stepped out of his paged confines and is now following the rabbit – prepared to lunge at any moment. Toward the book’s end, things go delightfully wrong for the poor fluffy old rabbit, and the reader is left with an empty spread – filled only with the rabbit’s borrowed book (now tattered and shredded) but with no sign of the rabbit himself. It’s a positively morbid way to end a story, and hence Gravitt provides the aforementioned “alternative ending” – but one, as clever young readers will quickly see, is a bit less than legitimate in its earnestness.

“Wolves” is the kind of subversive book that well-meaning adults love to hate, because of it’s “morbidness” and out of some seeming moral indignation that “kids deserve happy endings” – and the flip of that, it’s a book that clever children love to love, because of its brilliant cleverness and how it recognises their sense of humour and intelligence.

Nov 21, 2009 :: Tagged under: , :: #

Best Books for Manly Men

Alright, so the books aren’t really for men. They’re for boys. And young men. Still, it’s coming from a site called “The Art of Manliness,” so cut me some slack with the headline.

Ahem.

Without further ado, a list the “50 Best Books for Boys and Young Men,” by Brett and Kate McKay.

Ahem again. Alright, with a little ado first:

Unfortunately, not all boys have that kind of enthusiasm for reading. For several decades now, boys have scored lower on reading assessment tests than girls. Boys also take longer to learn to read than girls, are less likely to actually read and to value reading, and are more likely to label themselves as “non-readers” ….

What’s the problem? Some of it may be biological (boys’ language skills develop slower that girls). But a lot of it is sociological. Boys may see reading as a passive and thus sissy activity. Boys also lack male reading mentors – their librarians and teachers are often female, and it’s mom that reads to them. And in the name of gender-neutrality, teachers are foisting books on boys that they simply do not like.

But parents are to blame too, often trying to make their sons read “important books” to build their character. Dad loved some long tome as a boy and wants junior to come to an equal appreciation of it.

But reading experts all agree that boys need to be allowed to pick the books that really interest them.

Still, as they conclude, suggestions don’t hurt a bit. And so finally, without further ado… Well, you’ll just have to click over to see the list itself. With titles like “The Graveyard Book,” “James and the Giant Peach,” and “The Phantom Tollbooth,” though, it’s well worth it.

Just a side note, though: While all the books here are really exceptionally good books – no denying it – there’s a fat chance you’re going to get an average boy today to read “Where the Red Fern Grows.” And, well, a lot of these other titles too. (Heck, it’d take threat of Hungarian toenail-prying torture to get me to read some of these books again.)

That said, it’s always worth it to have a diverse mix of books at hand – a collection of different subjects and genres, books in different styles, a mixture of contemporary fiction alongside classics. Sure, some books will still never get read, but the kid is bound to have a lot more enjoyable an experience with the ones he does pick up to read.

Nov 18, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Audacity, Novel Writing, and the Month of November

This isn’t a case of “One of these things are not like the others.” Sure, they’re all different things – but in order to stick the last two together, you have to have a heaping dose of the first. Anybody who tries to write 50,000 words in a month has to be just a bit audacious (or crazy, to put it another perhaps more truthful way).

I’m cough trying it out myself for the first time, attempting to write a first draft of that great American novel that we all aspire to – and its the experience of being in the trenches, actually doing it, that makes me really appreciate Neven Morgan’s impassioned defense of the NaNoWriMo concept in the face of the skeptics:

There’s no need to get negative about the efforts of many smart, nice people on the very first day they roll up their sleeves. They’re taking on something demanding, new, fun, and entirely victimless. They’re the 9-year-old with a skateboard and visions of Tony Hawk, the high-school sophomore with a programming book and a sketching app all worked out in his head, the girl with a guitar from Target and tabs to ‘Sweet Jane’ she downloaded online. There’s neither victory nor samaritanism in telling them they’ll fail.

Nov 06, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Unleashing Life's Wild Things

A.O. Scott, of the New York Times, talks about “Where the Wild Things Are”, the upcoming (fantastic) “Fantastic Mr. Fox”, and other children’s films and books:

Will “Fantastic Mr. Fox” be too scary for youngsters? Too confusing? Maybe, for some. But so was “Coraline,” Henry Selick’s pitch-perfect adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s kiddie-gothic novel. So was “Edward Scissorhands,” Tim Burton’s indelibly dark portrait of the artist as a young goth. So is “The Wizard of Oz” and half the books in the children’s section of the library. And so, of course, is “Wild Things.”

The impulse to protect children from these kinds of stories is understandable. Like adults, they experience plenty of hard feelings in their daily lives — at home, on the playground, in the classroom, in their dreams — and they may want, as we do, to use movies and books as a form of escape. Bright colors, easy lessons and thrilling rides that end safely and predictably on terra firma have their place. But so, surely, do representations of the grimmer, thornier thickets of experience. That’s what art is, and surely our children deserve some of that too.

It seems that A.O. Scott, as a critic, is always at his best when tackling deeper, more impacting issues through the lenses of film and cinema. He certainly does a swell job here – while many critics have gotten bogged down in “how scary” for a children’s film “Where the Wild Things Are” is, Scott has gone straight to the real issue and declared that movies for children are supposed to be scary. I couldn’t agree more.

Nov 05, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Scholastic Backtracks on Excluding Gay Friendly Book From Fair

So the Scholastic “Harbinger of Commercialised Crap, Not Books” School Book Fair organisation decides to demand that an author revise her book before they’d ship it out to schools for their book fairs – specifically, asking her to leave out some “naughty words” and beyond that, change a homosexual parenting couple in the story to a heterosexual one.

The company sent a letter to Myracle’s editor asking the author to omit certain words such as “geez,” “crap,” “sucks,” and “God” (as in, “oh my God”) and to alter its plotline to include a heterosexual couple. Myracle agreed to get rid of the offensive language “with the goal—as always—of making the book as available to as many readers as possible,” but the deal breaker was changing Milla’s two moms.

“A child having same-sex parents is not offensive, in my mind, and shouldn’t be ‘cleaned up.’” says Myracle, adding that the book fair subsequently decided not to take on Luv Ya Bunches because they wanted to avoid letters of complaint from parents.

But! Lo and behold, people have gotten wind and have been, um, firmly chastising Scholastic for the move. So now Scholastic is backtracking – probably realising that it’s bad (although perhaps originally unintentional on their part) to think of censoring books out of a nationwide school book fair set-up (that not only do they have a disgusting monopoly on, but have increasingly crapped up with commercialised toys and not books) just because said book portrays homosexual family structures.

What I really want to know, though, is what David Anaxagoras is asking: Since when is “Geez” suddenly too harsh of language for kids? I suspect if the people making this decision had spent any time actually in a school, they’d encounter a lot worse of language than that from the kids.

If we expect literature and books to make any difference in kids’ lives, then we have to not sacrifice their honesty for what’s politically smart.

Oct 29, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Experiencing the Book "Where the Wild Things Are"

In a wonderfully illustrated way, Michael J. McAghon deconstructs Maurice Sendak’s picture book “Where the Wild Things Are” – and shows how subtle things, like page layout and illustration placement, unconsciously impact the reader.

It’s a great testimony to how picture books – at least good ones – are often an artform unto their own, requiring great skill and masterwork to pull off well. If you like this, I suspect you’ll also appreciate the wonderful Molly Bang’s book, “Picture This: How Pictures Work.”

Oct 19, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Dog Days for the Wimpy Kid

The New York Times looks at just what, perhaps, has made Jeff Kinney’s wildly popular “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” book series such a hit among kids. They also look at some of the controversy behind the books:

The Internet is filled with testimonials about children who were frustrated readers until they got their hands on a Wimpy Kid book. But some parents have been less enthusiastic.

“The words ‘moron,’ ‘jerk,’ ‘dork’ and ‘hot girls’ are used in the first five pages,” complains a reviewer on Amazon of the first book. “This is a poor choice for good character building in your children.”

Well, just speaking as someone who was a kid once, I’d say that’s partly what’s made them so popular. Perhaps Grumpy Amazon Reviewer was born at the age of 60?

But before I correct her personally, I’ll let the experts do it:

… The Wimpy Kid books give us a rare glimpse into a child’s ethical mind. “It really captures the struggle of a child that age trying to figure out what it means to be a person,” said Dr. Joshua Sparrow, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Sparrow read the first Wimpy Kid book after a young patient told him about it.

“I think it can help parents tune into what kids know and how they think,” he went on. “It captures what a child is able to get and what’s beyond their reach, and how you have to adjust your expectations because they are still a work in progress.”

Oct 18, 2009 :: Tagged under: , :: #

Sherman Alexie: "Don't Call Me Warrior"

Mother Jones Magazine takes a few moments to interview popular Native American author Sherman Alexie about a range of things – like “Obama’s tribe, Native wannabes, and why Kindles aren’t sexy.”

His 2007 novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is one of the best Young Adult books published (one of my favorite books ever, in fact), and as far as recognising and sympathising with children’s perspectives goes, I think Alexie is one of the best authors a person can read.

Now, as usual, he’s back with his witticism and cultural insight in this interview. I particularly love his opinion on what some call the “death” of the printed word:

If I had been talking about drowning polar bears, people would have been weeping with me. But nobody recognizes that a bookstore or library can also be a drowning polar bear. And right now in this country, magazines, newspapers, and bookstores are drowning polar bears. And if people can’t see that or don’t want to talk about it, I don’t understand them at all.

Oct 12, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

How Maurice Sendak Made the World Safe for Monsters

The Boston Globe examines the origins of the Wild Things:

From the moment they appeared in 1964, they seemed bracingly and completely original. But in fact Sendak’s monsters had a long series of ancestors and descendants, and a closer look at their lineage suggests why “Where the Wild Things Are” marked such a revolutionary moment in monster history: not because they were so radically original, but because the book allowed us to see monsters in a new way.

In interviews, Sendak has said the Wild Things were inspired by visiting relatives, whose appearance in his boyhood Brooklyn home were a source of great alarm to the budding storyteller. Just who were these creatures, barging into the living room and upsetting the domestic routine? (They’d come over for dinner, so young Sendak was told, but was he the meal?) Sendak cites one uncle in particular, named Joe, as a template for the Wild Things, and looking at the illustrations we can imagine him as he appeared to the impressionable child: a rotund, hirsute guy, jovial but prone to overexcitement, toothy, and bulgy-eyed.

But it’s possible to find other ancestors, distant cousins, and even offspring on the Wild Things’ family tree.

Fantastic.

Oct 04, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

The Next Great Director/Children’s Book Pairing

Amy Kraft amusingly considers what the next perfect Great Film Director/Children’s Book pairing will be – after Spike Jonze and “Where the Wild the Wild Things Are”, and Wes Anderson and “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (both of which I am so deeply in love with).

I’m awfully fond of this imaginary pairing:

Michel Gondry’s Harold and the Purple Crayon – can you imagine the imagery that Gondry would give to this already imaginative classic?

I’d also like to see some love for Leo Lionni’s books. Or maybe a Peter Jackson take on Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” where the famished larvae roams New York City and starts eating tall buildings.

Aug 01, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Exclusive Featurette of "Where the Wild Things Are"

The first trailer was simply magical. But if you’re still not sold on the upcoming “Where the Wild Things Are” film, watch this exclusive new featurette – in which author and illustrator Maurice Sendak talks at length about director Spike Jonze’s uniquely wonderful cinematic vision for the classic children’s book.

“What I’ve seen him do, he’s turned it into his without giving up mine – but embodying mine with Spike Jonze, and astonishing me at how it maintains its peculiarness as a work. What flows through the whole thing is a such a strange feeling; I’ve never seen a movie that looked or felt like this, and it’s his personal this. He’s not afraid of himself. He’s a real artist that let’s it come through the work. So he’s touched me very much.”

– Maurice Sendak

I’m in heaven right now.

Jul 24, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Children's Literature Grows Up

An old 2002 piece from Salon about the surge in adult genre and fiction writers – like Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman, and Carl Hiassen – who have shifted their focus toward writing children’s literature:

It’s partly the memory of the potency of their childhood reading that prompts many adult authors to try their hand at the form. Handler says, “You never love a book the way you love a book when you’re 10. No matter how much I admire the work of Nabokov or Murakami, I’m not going to reread ‘Lolita’ or ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’ nearly as many times as I reread ‘Harriet the Spy’ in third grade.” (It might be interesting to see what part “Harriet the Spy,” a book about the pleasures of voyeurism if ever there was one, played in the development of future film critics. I know of at least three who worshipped it as kids.)

Chabon feels similarly: “You never forget the delight that the books you loved as a child brought you; it’s all still there, you remember it. It’s fairly inevitable, I’d say, to want to try and get some of that for your own kids; but in the past, in this country at least, it was not necessarily feasible and perhaps not quite taken seriously enough.”

All of these authors have written really smashing good children’s books – and I’m glad they, and more authors like them, are recognizing the real rewards of writing for children. Let’s hope they continue.

(Discovered via Boing Boing.)

Jul 23, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Children's Books That Were Edited or Censored for Accusations of Racism

A list of five books that were criticized for racism – accusations of which were both founded and unfounded. Most were later changed for subsequent editions, to fix the offensively-deemed material.

There are certainly deeper backstories to many of these – Roald Dahl’s standings about race were muddled and complicated, and Hergé later regarded “Tintin in the Congo” as a product of the misinformed culture during the time period. Still, there’s one or two surprises on the list.

Jul 17, 2009 :: Tagged under: , :: #

Vatican Finally Offers Blessing on Harry Potter

Can you imagine that, Harry Potter’s not evil anymore!

Reuters (and Catholic News Service):

It took a while, but the Vatican has finally come around to giving Harry Potter its blessing. The Vatican newspaper gave a favorable review to the latest film, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” after giving the lead character a decisive thumbs down in the past. The review said the new film “reaches the right balance,” thanks to a “a clear line of demarcation between those who work for good and those who carry out evil.”

Jul 16, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Lessons on Racism from the Wizarding World

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite discusses in The Washington Post one of the more poignant moral complexities raised by J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series:

Wizards may do magic, but prejudice does not magically disappear in their society. Racist prejudice bedevils both wizard and human society.

Rowling’s use of the term “half-blood” to vividly evoke the damaging effects of racial prejudice in the life of some of her key characters must be highlighted, especially this week. This is the same week where the American people have been treated to the unseemly spectacle of conservative politicians using “racism” as a club to beat up Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic American woman nominated to the United States Supreme Court. These attacks on her, as illustrated but not limited to Senator Sessions’ remarks, illustrate that her questioners have no insight into their own racial formation, and deformation, in a white-dominant American society.

Jul 16, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Midnight at the Movies with the 'Harry Potter Teens'

Anastasia Goodstein tells of her experience seeing the midnight premiere of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” in a theater full of the “Harry Potter Teens” – those young adults ages 16-17 who had grown up reading the books and watching the movies.

I would like to again smugly assert my privileged status among the Harry Potter fanbase by saying that the teens Goldstein recounts are technically of the second generation of “Harry Potter Teens”; the first are the 20- to 23-year-olds like me, who were around Harry’s age when the first book was published.

Jul 15, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

'Harry Potter' Grows Up

Leave it to TIME’s Richard Corliss to write such a fine look back at the “Harry Potter” series over the years, both in print and on screen:

From the publication of the first Harry Potter book in 1997 to the final volume a decade later, J.K. Rowling’s septet of adventures has enchanted tens of millions of kids, their older siblings and all those adults who are as fascinated by the wizarding world as any child. The books held many delights for the very young: the Quidditch matches, magical beasts and wand work. But as Harry and his classmates entered puberty, Rowling began to address a time of grand and awful responsibilities, the transformation of the body before the mind is ready, the queasy realization that every decision can have ecstatic or cataclysmic consequences. In a word, adolescence.

The Potter film adaptations, after a subpar start in late 2001, have grown in richness and power until, in aggregate, they stand close to the summit of multipart movies — more sprawling if less artistically ambitious than The Lord of the Rings, more consistently intelligent though less original than the six Star Wars films. By the time the series is completed with a two-part telling of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, due to open in November 2010 and July 2011, its release cycle will be nearly as long as the 10 years Rowling took to publish her books.

I picked the first book up off the shelf at the library when I was probably eleven; I realize now it must’ve been mere months after it was first published in the United States.

I still remember those first few exhilarating moments of reading it vividly. Since then, Harry and I have literally grown up together – and I couldn’t be any fonder of that fact.

Jul 15, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

'Harry Potter' Takes Off in Pursuit of Sales

Bloomberg.com:

“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the sixth film based on J.K. Rowling’s books, opens in more than 4,200 U.S. and Canadian theaters and may take in $155 million in its first five days, estimates Jeff Hartke, an analyst at Los Angeles-based Hollywood Stock Exchange, which forecasts film performance. … Showings start at 12:01 a.m. tomorrow. Advance tickets were being purchased at the fastest pace of any movie this year, including top grosser “Transformers,” and accounted for 96 percent of current purchases, online vendor Fandango.com said yesterday. More than 1,000 U.S. viewings were sold out, Los Angeles-based Fandango said in a statement.

I know I sure as heck am having a hard time buying tickets. My local theater says they’ll probably be opening an additional one or two auditoriums – on top of the five already – for tonight’s midnight showing, thank goodness.

Jul 14, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

A Year in the Life of J.K. Rowling

The first of six YouTube video segments from the 2007 documentary “J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life.” It originally aired in the U.K. on ITV, but I don’t think it ever made it’s way across the pond. (This, at least, is the first time I’ve ever seen it.)

The documentary, by James Runcie, follows Rowling’s life over the year she finished writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, and as the book launched and Rowling went on a publicity tour promoting its release.

Click through to the QuietTube version of part one, and then to access the other parts, just click through the related videos or the YouTuber’s other videos until you reach them.

Edit: I just saw that ABC is actually playing this same documentary right now, in a re-edited form… and you wouldn’t believe they could, but the bloke producers really managed to muck it up for American television. Commercial breaks every time you blink (“When we come back…” cliffhangers included!), a re-recorded “American” voice narrating (same narration, just different voice – wha…?), and some lame introduction from Television-Lady-Standing-in-Weird-Marble-Embalmed-Hallway. Meh. I’m now a bit disgusted.

Jul 13, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

The Battle Between Harry Potter and Twilight

The Wall Street Journal reports on the so-called “battle” between the Harry Potter and Twilight franchises for what some would consider the same teen demographic.

Let’s just say I’m a bit skeptical that such a popularity contest exists – at least, outside of the imaginations of executives whose jobs depend on such a fight – but, you know, whatever. If they want to believe that kids can only love one franchise at a time, that’s their business… but I don’t think that most kids are buying it.

Jul 10, 2009 :: Tagged under: , :: #

Wes Anderson's "Fantastic Mr. Fox"

There are two things that I will always, undoubtedly, without condition love-beyond-fathomable-reason: and they are Roald Dahl and Wes Anderson.

Dahl – the uniquely wonderful British author known for “James and the Giant Peach” and other literary classics – brought an unrelenting humor and dark whimsy to my childhood. Literally, I felt my brain being tickled whenever I read his books; there were little men, Gremlin-like, who sprouted from the book pages, hopping from chapter to chapter to then enter my left ear and wander deeper inside my head, where they poked and prodded my cerebrum relentlessly.

Anderson – the auteur film director with his idiosyncratic stories and offbeat visual sensibilities – has these past few years taken up an uncannily close place to Dahl in my brain. Like Dahl, he is unsentimental in his storytelling and fiercely funny in recognizing the absurdities of life. His imagination just naturally seeps into my everyday thoughts and experiences, and his darned visual style pervades my life (and clothing choices). He’s too irresistible not to love.

Naturally then, the thought of Roald Dahl and Wes Anderson put together makes my head explode. But that’s exactly the case with the upcoming Wes Anderson film, “Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride” bringing the movie to life, it shall be very good. I declare that as absolute truth, even before seeing it.

But all of this is to say that the very first photograph of the movie has now hit the web you’ll have to round it out a bit in your head with past knowledge of Wes Anderson’s trademark style, but it is exciting. Here it is:

Complementing it, and perhaps slightly more fitting with the image I have in my head of the movie, is the only other glimpse we’ve gotten, of the film’s logo:

If that doesn’t tickle your brain, then you’re not wired right.

Jul 10, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , , :: #

Kristof Picks the Best Kids Books Ever

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof picks what he considers the best books for kids to read this summer (lest they – heaven forbid – drop those precious I.Q. points that he worries about):

2. The Hardy Boys series. Yes, I hear the snickers. But I devoured them myself and have known so many kids for whom these were the books that got them excited about reading. The first in the series is weak, but “House on the Cliff” is a good opener. (As for Nancy Drew, I yawned over her, but she seems to turn girls into Supreme Court justices. Among her fans as kids were Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.)

Disregarding his compulsion to “make summer productive”, Kristof does know how to put together a good list. He has Twain (“The Prince and the Pauper,” not “Tom Sawyer” – though he considers both good reading) and Harry Potter, Alex Rider and “The Wind in the Willows.” And while he grossly omitted Roald Dahl, he does later make amends on his blog – and includes mention of the wonderful “A Wrinkle in Time” series as well as other classics, like “The Phantom Tollbooth,” “Harriet the Spy,” and “Holes.” His kids chimed in with their own suggestions as well, and he’s inviting readers to continue commenting – in fact, they already broke his previous record of 1,000 comments for a single column, coming in it at more than 2,350.

So, I guess, grab your library cards. That’s a lot of reading to do.

Jul 08, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Turning Books into Blockbusters

What movies have you seen with kids in the past few years? There’s a growing chance that the stories were based on pre-existing material, writes Rachel Abramowitz for the Los Angeles Times:

“Audiences today are looking for family experiences,” said Elizabeth Gabler, president of production at Fox 2000 Pictures, which is producing the live-action “Percy Jackson.” One result of the recession is the rise in ticket sales, as movies remain one of the relatively cheaper forms of entertainment.

“With market and world conditions, it’s a much easier form of entertainment for a whole family to do together. It’s almost like a sporting event,” Gabler said. All the movie studios are hunting for existing properties with tested concepts — at least as books — that can be turned into films, though none exist on the scale of J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter,” with its more than 400 million copies in print and vast cultural footprint.

With movie adaptations of works like “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” “Yogi Bear,” “The Smurfs,” The Lone Ranger,” and more in the works, Hollywood is pillaging television for stories – and also reaching for the bookshelf to find classic children’s stories to draw upon. The advantage, as executives see it, is a built-in audience and the ability to reach out to parents as well as kids. Of course studios must strike a careful balance – a “balance of intensity,” one Hollywood executive says, where parents know exactly what thrills to expect.

If you’re interested in the state of children’s movies and what kids watch, I’d heartily recommend the article.

Also don’t miss the fantastic conversation at the end with the screenwriters responsible for the upcoming “Goosebumps” film:

To prepare to adapt the series into a movie (slated for release next year), screenwriters Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander watched 1980s flicks like “Gremlins,” “The Goonies” and “Poltergeist.”

“They’re more realistic than a lot of the family films today,” Alexander said. “The kids feel like real kids. They mess with each other. They swear. They’re uninhibited. There’s an appealing level of chaos.”

This just tickles me to no end, and my gut instinct is that Karaszewski and Alexander might really have nailed it with “Goosebumps” – unlike many of the other productions mentioned. “An appealing level of chaos…” How fantastic is that?

May 25, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , , , , :: #

Pixar, John Lasseter, and The Brave Little Toaster?

John Lasseter, recounting in a 2006 interview about his first introduction to Thomas M. Disch’s story of The Brave Little Toaster: A Bedtime Story for Small Appliances:

“A friend of mine had told me about a 40-page novella called The Brave Little Toaster, by Thomas Disch. I’ve always loved animating inanimate objects, and this story had a lot of that. Tom Willhite liked the idea, too, and got us the rights to the story so we could pitch it to the animation studio along with our test clip.”

John Lasseter, as you may know, began his career as an animator at Walt Disney Feature Animation in the 1980s. The above quote recounts Lasseter’s efforts setting up The Brave Little Toaster as an adaptation at Disney, proposing a 2D/3D hybrid blend of animation for it – a technique which they first decided to try out in 1983 on Where the Wild Things Are (another project Disney was working on).

The “Brave Little Toaster in hybrid 2d/3d” idea was not a hit, and Lasseter got booted from Disney specifically for suggesting it – at which time he headed to a then-fledgling company called Pixar. The Brave Little Toaster was produced – as a traditionally animated film – by Hyperion Pictures and then distributed on home video by Disney in 1987.

Of course the game has changed since then, with Lasseter now effectively in charge (as Chief Creative Officer) of all of Pixar’s as well as Disney’s animated films. And one interesting idea floating around out there – based upon an interview with Pete Docter, the director of Pixar’s “Up”, where he mentions a new Pixar project called “Brave” – is that Lasseter might just be digging “The Brave Little Toaster” back out of the archives for a revamp.

At this point it’s rumor-mongering, put out there for consideration by the folks at the the film blog /Film, but this much I can say: for a rumor, I like it much. It probably will never happen, but if it did I’d be happy.

“The Brave Little Toaster” was a favorite of mine as a kid, and while the original film will always remain a favorite, I’m all for talented companies like Pixar exploring the story in different ways.

May 25, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , , , , , , :: #