YA Book-to-Movie News Roundup

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ender's Game premiered Nov. 1, 2013.

The Book Thief premiered Nov. 8, 2013.

Catching Fire premieres Nov 22, 2013.

Divergent premieres Mar. 21, 2014.

The Maze Runner premieres Sept. 19, 2014.

I, for one, love to watch as Hollywood discovers YA Fiction. 

The Lakeport Cinema is doing a special double-feature for The Hunger Games and Catching Fire on Thursday, Nov. 21 for $12. What a fun event for a family outing!

The Mockingjay movie (third in Hunger Games Trilogy) will be split into two parts (thanks to screenrant.com for the news). Boo! The book isn't long or detailed enough to merit the split, but Hollywood WILL MAKE THEIR MONEY, Y' HEAR?

The Divergent movie trailer looks good! Much better than the teaser trailer did. I read Divergent in one sitting when I should have been doing homework, which speaks to its thrills and pacing. This book also packs a thematic punch, which I love, but it has some plotting and worldbuilding problems. But! Check the new trailer:



Thanks to GreenBeanTeenQueen for the news.

The Giver, a classic in Children's Literature, is also being filmed and is scheduled to premiere on August 15th 2014 (thanks to ropeofsilicon.com for the news). The book is a wonderfully lyrical, disturbing Dystopia by Lois Lowry (a prolific author of several critically acclaimed children's and young adults' novels).  Many famous actresses and actors populate this cast, including Meryl Streep. Exxxxcited! Certain readers, however, are rumbling about Hollywood's choice to cast a 24 year old actor for Jonas, the 12 year old main character of the book. Personally, it doesn't worry me too much--Hollywood can remake Jonas into a teenager without impacting the story line too much. I hope.

Though filming for The Maze Runner is over, the director protracted the release date until September 19, 2014 (thanks to Hypable for the news). Again, boo. But maybe that's a good thing--we wouldn't want an undercooked film, after all. I enjoyed the trilogy, which is why it made my 2013 Summer Reading Recommendations. If you want to read my book review + craft post on the trilogy, you can click here. By the way, have you seen these Maze Runner trading cards?

*11/21/13 Update: I forgot to mention that the film adaption of Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now premiered on Oct. 4th 2013.

Photo Attribution:
I, Sailko [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/), CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5) or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

2 New Book-To-Movie-Trailers

Another new Catching Fire Trailer, this one with some exciting glimpses:



Also, another book trailer for The Book Thief movie (yippie!):



Thanks to GreenBeanTeenQueen for the news!

Three Goodies: New Narnia, TTT & Self-Publishing Done Right

I have three announcements!

First, the next Narnia movie is in the works: The Silver Chair!

Second, the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) announced the Teens' Top Ten Winners- Woot!

For a list of the books and other information about Teens' Top Ten, check out YALSA's website page, or this post in which I explain why I love the TTT competition.

And, finally, earlier today the blogging sensation Nathan Bransford released his first self-pubbed book, a writing guide. Happily, Bransford presents writers an example of "the right way" to self-publish for a large audience. He hired two editors, a cover designer, the whole shebang to prepare his book for the public. I haven't read it yet, but I certainly will.

Book-To-Movie Trailers Galore

Eventually, when I run out of book-to-movie trailers to post about, I'll get back to writing about writing and book reviews. But for now, you can get excited about these upcoming adaptions!

Book #1:

The YA novel How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff has won several awards, including YALSA's Printz award (just found a Goodreads list for Printz award winners!). An American girl visits her English cousins and Aunt. Soon after, the aunt takes a business trip, leaving the cousins alone. The next day, London is bombed by an unknown enemy and war breaks out. The story sounds amazing, although I've never read it. I have heard that the narrator is obnoxious, at first (too teenagerish, according to Maggie Stiefvater's review), but that her voice quickly draws the reader in completely.

Trailer for Movie Adaption:



Next Book:

The next movie needs no explanation beyond "Hobbit Part II." *Happy dance*

Trailer for Movie Adaption:


And Finally:

This teaser trailer for the movie "Divergent" is based on the crazily bestselling YA novel of the same name. I was modestly excited about the book, on a thematic level, and it has a killer pace with a few good thrills. But I say "modest" because craftwise, it could have been better. We'll see how the movie turns out...I fear we may have a soap opera on our hands! But we'll never know until we watch, right?

Trailer for Movie Adaption:

The Book Thief Trailer

Since I'm lame and missed my post on Friday...you'll just have to suffer through this wonderful trailer for The Book Thief today instead...




By the way: The Book Thief is available on both ebook and audiobook from the Lakeport Library, if you want to prepare for the movie.

NEW Catching Fire Trailer + Signed Book Plate Swag

Did YOU know there would be ANOTHER Catching Fire trailer? *happy dance* This one lets us in on a major plot twist, but it sure sells the movie!



ALSO!

I just thought I'd brag about my new The Raven Boys swag. Last month I told you about a bookplate giveaway Maggie Stiefvater was doing. Well, I just got my signed bookplate! Here 'tis:

Yeah, I taped it to my Kindle. So?

Stiefvater 1) wrote my absolute favorite YA novel of the last two years, The Scorpio Races, and 2) is also an artist, so she did the artwork for the bookplates. She sent me a Maggie-esque note along with the book plate:

Made. My. Year!

Movie, Book and Industry News

Greetings Scribblers and Book Bandits,

Today we've got some industry news about self-publishing, and book news about popular teen lit and movies.

Self-publishing has dominated industry discussions over the last few years. I recently read a very professional article about the reality of self-publishing, the pros and cons. Some experienced traditional and self-publishers also offered their opinions in the comment section. I learned a lot from it.

Teens' Top Ten Nominees are in! WOOT! In case you've never heard of the Teens' Top Ten competition, let me explain briefly. Teens' focus groups across the country nominate a list of titles (usually 25, although there are 28 this year) for the teen reading public to devour between April and August 15th. Over the next month, they can vote on their two favorites. YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) tallies the votes into a list of the ten ultimate favorites. This is a great way for interested persons to gauge YA interest in reading for the year. Although I typically have to weed out a few low-grade passing fad books, the teens usually do that for me. The very best of the year's crop often make the top ten (such as *ahem* The Scorpio Races *ahem*, my favorite book of the last two years or so). Check out the sweet vid below to see this year's 28 nominees, and click here for book descriptions.



The teens nominated some interesting choices this year! I was thrilled to see Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore, a beautiful book I discussed here. Also, an author who began as a self-publishing superstar, Amanda Hocking, made the list with her book Wake. Someone to keep an eye on. Also on the list is Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, one of the Morris Award Winners (see our Lakeport Library's list of available award-winning teen fiction here and here or find full yearly YA Award lists here). This sounds like a quality read--and plus, there are dragons. I enjoyed The Raven Boys  by Maggie Stiefvater, another nominee. I haven't reviewed it yet because it deserves an in-depth post on craft. Serious, Stiefvater's got chops. (Which, of course, we already know from her Printz-honor winning The Scorpio Races....) Finally, the book I look forward most to reading this year, Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, is on the list. This highly-praised book won a 2013 Printz Honor and was short-listed for the Carnegie Medal in the UK. I hope it wins! Should be great year for the TTT.

Kristin Cashore's book Graceling, has been optioned for a film! This is a great female-lead Fantasy, one I studied for a paper of the genre. In 2009, it was awarded the Morris honor. Thanks to GreenBeanTeenQueen for the news.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card is one of the hallmarks of YA and Children's Sci-Fi fiction. I haven't read it but from what I understand, that's kind of like not seeing Star Wars. The movie date is approaching! Check out the trailer below, if interested. Thanks, again to GreenBeanTeenQueen for this news.

Get More: Abigail Breslin, Harrison Ford, Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

Have a good week, friends!

Catching Fire Trailer & Library News

Scribblers and Book Bandits,

"Big News" alert: the Lakeport Reference Librarian, Susan Clayton, is retiring! We will sure miss her! Be sure to stop by the library on her last day, May 1st, and wish her a very merry retirement.

A Friends of the Library Booksale is coming up on May 4th, from 10AM-3PM (Friends' members can come a half hour early, at 9:30). Paperbacks $.50, Hardcovers $1.00. I love these booksales because they help build my summer stockpile!

And, by the way, thanks for supporting Rock the Drop last week! Amy's book was a hit. One person picked it up the day before "Rock the Drop" as we were taking a picture to put on the blog the next day. That person read it and brought it back for the actual "rock the drop" day. Then, another person picked it up to read and pass on to her daughter. Success!

Next week we'll have a writing post, BUT THIS WEEK we have exciting news from the Hunger Games front: the trailer for "Catching Fire," the second movie. Enjoy!



Photo Attribution
By Jesus Solana from Madrid, Spain [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Free Teen Book: Operation Teen Book Drop 2013

Hi Scribblers and Book Bandits!
Today is a special early post because tomorrow is "Rock the Drop 2013," which means a friend (Amy Patton, the Librarian who runs the Young Adult Summer Reading Program at the Lakeport Library) and I will be dropping two awesome Young Adult books off in specific locations for you to find. It's an adventure! I am leaving a book in the Riviera for a fellow reader to find and enjoy, while Amy leaves hers in a different spot. Tomorrow I will tell you the specific locations + give you pictures of the books in their spots.






Here is my book:

This is actually two Sarah Dessen books packaged together into one--and with the movie cover! (The books are better than the movie, of course.) The first book, That Summer is about a high school girl named Haven who wishes for the past, before her sister was marrying "boring Lewis." She looks back, back to the summer her sister dated Sumner who colored life exciting. But when she realizes the past was not perfect, she gains more hope for the future. This was a free, quiet and witty read--Dessen's debut novel. She was originally writing towards a more adult audience, so it has a different flavor from her later books. The second novel, Someone Like You, is about two high school girls who rely more heavily on each other than every before during this particularly difficult year. As usual, Dessen writes quiet realism mixed with clever humor and endearing characters. Friendship is the focus in this one, and I loved it because friendship is so important in high school (and all of life, but especially then). The movie combines these two books into one story--an interesting mix. The title "How To Deal" is very obviously about how to survive high school. For more info on Sarah Dessen books, check out her website.
And here is Amy's book:

This book is Newberry-winning historical fiction about a Jewish girl who lives during the time of the Holocaust. I haven't read it, but I've read other Lois Lowry books. They are beyond "just" exciting--they are beautiful. Literary.

Tommorrow, I will reveal the book drop locations. Get Ready. Get Set...

This project was inspired by Figment.com, which posted about how several teen lit organizations (such as YALSA) are parternering in the effort. Keep your eye out for our books and others!

Writing Contest, Industry News & Book News

C'mon, join the contest!

Scribblers and Book Bandits!
     I know it's not Friday, yet, but for the sake of the writing contest, I decided to post early.
     The free Lascaux flash fiction contest is opening up once again, starting tomorrow. Enter a 250 word flash fiction piece for a chance to win a dollar a word and publication in the Lascaux Review. They award "medallions" for finalists, too. You can put a medallion on your website or blog if you win! I entered this contest last year and had a lot of fun. The community is great. They will post on your work (anyone can read it) even if you don't win. The entry period ends on March 20th, so we'll have to write quickly!
     The extremely popular author of Before I Fall and the Delirium series, Lauren Oliver, cofounded a company called Paper Lantern Lit which constructs plots and story structures for writers. The writers that work with this company "inhabit" the story structures which the company creates. Interesting idea, eh? This might benefit a character-driven writer.
     In other news (book news, to be specific), the amazing young adult historical novel The Book Thief is being made into a movie!!! This book won the 2007 Printz honor (very prestigious), and no surprise there: it is narrated by "death" and set in Nazi Germany. It is literary and popular, and I highly recommend it. Also, Geoffrey Rush will be in the movie. Yippee! It will have to be awesome. So excited! Thanks to Nathan Bransford for this news.

Enjoy, everyone!

Photo Attribution
By Seattle Municipal Archives from Seattle, WA (Pie-eating contest, 2003  Uploaded by Jmabel) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Top 100 Movies

Today’s post has absolutely NOTHING to do with Literature and is completely self-indulgent, but gosh it was fun. Here is my Top 100 list of movies. I got this idea from Nathan Bransford’s blog (which I’m sure you’ve heard of before). Add to the list in the comments, if you like! I need some suggestions for oldies-but-goodies and classics.

1.      The Sound of Music

2.      Hamlet (Branagh)

3.      The Series of Unfortunate Events

4.      Memoirs of a Geisha

5.      The Lord of the Rings (all)

6.      Good Will Hunting

7.      Forrest Gump

8.      Pride and Prejudice (both major productions)

9.      Schindler's List

10.  The Shawshank Redemption

11.  The Princess Bride

12.  Catch Me If You Can

13.  A Few Good Men

14.  The King's Speech

15.  Ratatouille

16.  Monty Python and the Holy Grail

17.  Back to the Future (all 3)

18.  The Hunger Games

19.  To Kill a Mockingbird

20.  The Pirates of the Caribbean (first two)

21.  Batman (all new)

22.  The Hobbit (cartoon)

23.  A Knight's Tale

24.  The Emperor's New Groove

25.  Sherlock Holmes (2009)

26.  The Harry Potters (Yeah, that's right!)

27.  Mulan

28.  The Hobbit (new)

29.  Juno

30.  The Sleeping Beauty

31.  Miracle

32.  Extreme Days

33.  The Whole Nine Yards

34.  The Sixth Sense

35.  Signs

36.  A Beautiful Mind

37.  Swing Kids

38.  A League of Their Own

39.  How To Train Your Dragon

40.  The Sandlot

41.  Liar Liar

42.  Men in Black

43.  The Italian Job

44.  Remember the Titans

45.  Jumanji

46.  Patch Adams

47.  The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (newest)

48.  Casino Royale

49.  Les Miserables

50.  The Help

51.  V for Vendetta

52.  The Oceans (Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen)

53.  Sweet Home Alabama

54.  Never Let Me Go

55.  Iron Man

56.  Phantom of the Opera

57.  Gandhi

58.  Romeo and Juliet

59.  A Walk to Remember

60.  Hangman’s Curse

61.  My Big Fat Greek Wedding

62.  Seabiscuit

63.  Martian Child

64.  The Passion of the Christ

65.  Ransom

66.  Contact

67.  Megamind (you know it!)

68.  The Bournes (minus the newest)

69.  War of the Worlds (2005)

70.  Sister Act

71.  The Guardian

72.  Emma

73.  Kate and Leopold

74.  Monsters, Inc.

75.  Shrek

76.  Fast and Furious

77.  Money Ball

78.  Freaky Friday

79.  Twister

80.  Matilda

81.  The Karate Kid (old version)

82.  Water for Elephants

83.  Speed

84.  The Parent Trap (Lohan)

85.  The Guardian

86.  Hitch

87.  The Illusionist

88.  Flight

89.  National Treasure

90.  The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

91.  Rudy

92.  Zoolander

93. School of Rock

94.  Star Wars

95.  Star Trek

96.  The Blindside

 

97.  The Prince of Egypt

98.  Safe House

99.  Caddyshack

100.  Despicable Me

No Moldy Stories, Please.

     I just watched a movie called "Stolen" with my husband (who is a big Thriller fan and who has morphed me into one also. So persuasive, darn cute man). Strangely, I don't mind tearing apart a movie as much as a book. Food for thought. Moving on!
     The movie. It was...not awful, but I wouldn't ever recommend it to anyone. The strange thing is, it had a good actor. It had heart-poundingness. It had high stakes and it had (some, all right, not total) believability.
     But I still didn't like it. Why? Where did it go wrong?
     Let's check it out.

*Spoilers: If you want to see this kind of lame movie, don't read this next part. Move on to  the words "Spoiler Off"*

     In the movie,

• an otherwise respectable man is robbing a bank. That's semi-interesting.
• He gets caught. That's interesting.
• He gets out of jail eight years later, and stuff has changed. Following.
• His young daughter is not so young anymore, but is a "so whatever" teenager. Getting clichéy. 
• Man's daughter is kidnapped by, you guessed it, a crazy cab driver who feels he's been betrayed by our hero. Haven't I seen this before?
• Now cabbie is insane with anger and wants the money Hero-man stole from the bank, which everyone thinks Hero-man has...but which he burned.
• ...and yes, crazy cabbie is going to kill the daughter. So Hero-man must pull off one last job to get the money to give to the cabbie to save his daughter. 
• But will the insane cabbie really give the daughter back?

    

*Spoiler Off*

 

     Now, my story craft skills are okay. I've been studying them for a bit. But it was pretty sad how I called so many of these shots, and then continued to. Nothing unique or surprising happened. Also, I cared not for the characters. Even Kevin, who does not study storycraft, recognized that "this story was nothing new."

     I have a theory about this. Sometimes, stories are pushed into molds. They are formed a certain way because "Hey! That's how stories are formed and we need money so make a story. We give a man a desire, a ticking time bomb, and someone to combat the desire. Walla! Story!"
     No.
     There's a lot more to story than that.
     This story was one of those that followed the rules, but shouldn't have. It's been done before, it's unoriginal. The writer took a worn premise and recycled it without adding any originality. So the story structure was basically this:
     "Force a 'changed man' to steal money to pay his daughter's ransom."
     It was moldy. Stuck into a mold. When planning this movie, someone said, "Let's call this a Thriller and stick in some Thriller things. People will eat this up."
     Well, this particular "Thriller" needed to come with an ending an average storyteller like Christy couldn't call. In fact, Christy called a better ending than Thriller story served. There were other problems, and some of it was okay, but basically...in Kevin's words, "It's been done and it's been done better."
     Let me tell you the ending which you've probably already guessed.

*Spoiler On*

• Crazy Cabbie refuses to give back daughter.
• Hero-man kills Crazy Cabbie (a horribly long-drawn out, gruesome, unlikely, horror-filmish death involving multiple jumpings from behind and beatings).
• Hero-man's daughter nearly dies,
• Hero-man nearly dies,
• but both live. 
• Hero-man keeps some gold from the resulting last "job."

    Now, for a minute I thought they were going to pull off something really original in Hollywood. I thought they were going to kill the hero (after all...he was kind of a wimp and a criminal). I didn't see that coming until I thought they did it. Then they didn't do it.
     HRMPH.

*Spoiler Off*

 

    So, the "thrills" were less than steller. The characters could have been dug out quite a bit more. The cop-characters, the ending, the whole darn setup...it was all so very done before.
    I think this lame end and lame cast of characters lived to be filmed because it technically met the expectations of a Thriller-story. That's not good enough!
     Don't stick your story in a mold, friends. It'll grow green things on it and nobody will want it after that...unless you stick hot people in it, of course. Then they might.
     Now, because we can't all write original premises and we don't all just want to smack hot people into all our stories, we have to find our own unique twists. Is it a setting we know well? Characters we love? A topic we're passionate about? Could be. Add those. Don't just add mold-stuff and call it good.
     For great ideas about how to do this, read the book I'm reading: The Anatomy of Story by John Truby.

Photo Attribution

By Francois Polito (Appareil numérique OLYMPUS C700UZ) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

 

Works Cited

Stolen. Dir. Simon West. Writer. David Guggenheim. Perf. Nicolas Cage. Malin Akerman and Josh Lucas. 2012.

Truby, John. The Anatomy of Story: 22 steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller. New York, NY: Faber and Faber, Inc. 2007. Print.



A Negative Impact on Your Art

     In her essay "A Sweet Devouring," Eudora Welty described how her reading appetite has changed since childhood. She used to enjoy quantity over quality. Book lust. The more books in a series, the better. That didn't last forever, though, and she eventually began to care more for the content of her reading. "And then I went again to the home shelves and my lucky hand reached and found Mark Twain -- twenty-four volumes, not a series, and good all the way through" (251). She found a new kind of "Sweet Devouring."
     The idea of "more is better" is not an uncommon one in America, and the many trilogies and expansive book deals of late seem to reflect this. In her essay, Eudora Welty mentioned that a certain series was "one grand prevention" (250-251) of resolution. A series keeps the reader asking for the resolution, but doesn't give it until the final installment. Sometimes I just feel like I'm being strung along, as a reader, so that I'll keep buying books and giving the publishers my money.
     Trilogies are hot in the YA market, right now. I used to enjoy that aspect, but it's getting old. A lot of books just aren't interesting enough to merit several sequels. Not that all of them are bad, but many of them are just "eh." I'll read the first book and think, "Why didn't *insert author name here* stop after this book? It was fine, but there isn't enough room for expansion to create a series. I probably won't pick up the next book..."
     But I can think of examples that have the opposite effect. For instance: The Montmaray Journals. I'm reading the third book of this series and enjoying it immensely. Catching Fire, the second book in the The Hunger Games series, is another example. I thought it was even better than the first, which must have been tough to pull off because the first was already an incredibly engrossing Dystopia and a thought-provoking social critique. I couldn't put it down. Why?
     Suzanne Collins did not just add episodic adventure to episodic adventure in her series. She created, explored, related, and critiqued a whole society over the course of her three books and she made a statement about war. She used a compelling character in order to do so. The plot and character stakes grew in each book. And, of course, she made some interesting new comparisons between Panem and America in each book. Collins NEEDED three books to fully explore the concepts she tackled in the style she chose. Those are general ideas of about why THG worked so well over the course of a series. Maybe someday if I ever wise up (will I ever?), I can theorize about the specific craft work that powered Suzanne Collins's success.
     I hypothesize that when a book doesn't meet my high expectations for a series, it has something to do with money. When publishers release a book, they test reader response before releasing a sequel. They leave the story ending slightly open to keep up the possibility. If interest is low, they may not publish another book. If response is high, they rip out a sequel. I think the author should be allowed to write for however long their universe supports a good story and they should stop there. They shouldn't have to or want to stretch it on and on just to make big bucks.
     Movies can also have this problem. I anticipated watching The Hobbit like MY ENTIRE LIFE and was very excited to finally see it. Although I enjoyed a lot of it, the "sequel storm" definitely impacted the movie negatively. Because the story is being stretched into three separate films, someone had the, uh,  brilliant idea of attaching a whole subplot. No, no, no. That kind of thinking is all about money. *
     I'm resisting the urge to explain in-depth my thoughts about the new Bourne movie, The Bourne Legacy. Basically: they created it for money, and used the hype from the original Bourne movies to carry on a new, completely unoriginal story line.
     When art is created singularly for monetary gain, it's usually not very good. Don't get me wrong--all artists should get paid for their hard work. I even think it's okay for money to be a part of the reason you choose one project over another. But adding to a perfectly good story or stretching it out just for money is wrong, because the focus is not on art, but on money and how to make it.
     Scribblers, why do you write? Let's not get caught creating "one grand prevention" to get more money.

*Update 1/7/13: I did find out that the subplot was not entirely tacked on. Some of it was discussed in the Simarillion. However...it still felt out of place to me. I understand what the producers were trying to do. I even like some of it--but parts of it felt silly. I won't ruin it for you. If you have any opinions on this matter, I'd love to hear about them!

Works Cited

Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. NY, Scholastic Inc., 2008. Print.

Welty, Eudora. "A Sweet Devouring." The Best American Essays of the Century." Ed. Joyce Carl Oates. Co. Ed. Robert Atwan. Ser. The Best American Series. Houghton Mifflin: 2000. Print.