October is an exciting month for any YA lit fan, because it includes Teen Read Week! In honor of this annual celebration of young adult literature, YALSA invited book-loving teens all over the world to apply to share their enthusiasm for reading in a guest post for The Hub. Thirty-one talented young writers were chosen, and we’ll be featuring posts from these unique voices all month long. Here’s Dessi Gomez from California.
Movie soundtracks can potentially make or break a movie. It’s great when they complement the movie, and they are even more poignant when they connect to the book off of which the movie is based. I compared the soundtracks of three popular books that have been recently transformed into movies: The Giver by Lois Lowry, If I Stay by Gayle Forman, and The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. These soundtracks chosen to help tell each of these stories have different tones that create unique vibes for each and every reader and viewer. The Giver is suspenseful and liberating. If I Stay is indie and quietly heartbreaking. The Fault in Our Stars is modern and mainstream. I wanted to talk about four songs from each soundtrack that I personally think really topped off the movie. [Note: time stamps for specific lyrical references are given at the end of some descriptions.]
The Fault in Our Stars
The Fault in Our Stars- “All of These Stars†by Ed Sheeran
This song does a fine job of closing up the movie as the credits song. I thought of the title of the story when I heard the words, “I saw a shooting star and I thought of you.†Many of the songs in the soundtrack contain references to the stars. The lyric “I can see the stars from America/Amsterdam†connects the two countries in which Hazel and Augustus spend time together. The combination of “the way our horizons meet†and “skyline splits in two†speaks of how Hazel and Augustus are meant to be together, but are cruelly torn apart. “I looked across and fell in love†reminds me of how Augustus couldn’t take his eyes off of Hazel once he saw her in support group. [Times: beginning-1:37; 2:17-2:35; 3:15 to end]
