Tag: movies and TV

Monthly Monday Polls: September – Screen Adaptations; Yay or Nay?

Monday Poll @ YALSA's The HubHappy Labor/Labour Day, everyone!

Last month, The Hub asked which recent page-to-screen adaptation you were most stoked about, and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children took solidly half the vote, followed by A Monster Calls with 26%, and Me Before You with 12%, and then Alice Through the Looking Glass (6%), Nerve (3%), The Queen of Katwe (2%), and Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life(1%). Thanks to everyone who voted!

In researching the screen adaptations (projects already released and those on the horizon) it is abundantly clear that, where YA lit is concerned, film-or-tv rights are big business. True, many projects may languish “in development” for years (I’m looking at you, Lunar Chronicles!), but it can sometimes feel like everything YA that readers have loved on the page has a screen adaptation in the works, or has at least been optioned.

So…how do you feel about the deluge of page-to-screen adaptations? Do you find film/tv adaptations to be an awesome tool for expanding the potential audience for a story, offering a strong incentive for readers to try the book version, OR do you dread the inevitable bungling of beloved character nuances and rich, complex details that get cast aside in favor of time and clarity on the screen? Continue reading Monthly Monday Polls: September – Screen Adaptations; Yay or Nay?

Midseason TV Replacements – Readalikes, Part I

I’m back with more readalikes to match some of the midseason replacements TV networks will be putting out this month and next. Some of the shows I mentioned in my two posts this fall were actually pushed forward and are only premiering this month or next, while others I mentioned have already been canceled. :-( But to the best of my ability, these are some of the new shows you can expect to hit your television soon, from networks to cable to streaming. Check out part two next week.

Fresh-Off-the-BoatFresh Off the Boat (ABC) – starring Randall Park
Based on a chef’s memoir, this family comedy is about a Taiwanese family that moves to the United States and opens a restaurant. It takes place in the 1990s, which will be fun for adults and totally hilarious for teens who view that as nearly as historical as the 1890s. Click to watch the trailer.
Readalikes:

  • Mismatch by Lensey Namioka
  • The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
  • Tall Story by Candy Gourlay
  • Fresh Off the Boat by Eddie Huang

 

 

Continue reading Midseason TV Replacements – Readalikes, Part I

The Mystery of Veronica Mars: Best Teen Sleuth Of Our Time–Or All Time?

Auntie P flickr magnifying glass
image from Aunti P’s flickr

The teen sleuth has a long history in children’s and young adult literature.  During the twentieth century,  popular children’s fiction became an increasingly profitable market.  Large companies like the Stratemeyer Syndicate and its publishing partner Grosset and Dunlap produced masses of series fiction, finding especially great success with adventure and mystery series for children and teens.  Though these titles were first published in the 1930s and ’40s, many of the characters remain well-known cultural figures.  For example, Nancy Drew continues to appear in novels, video games, and even a feature film as recently as 2007.  Kid and teen detectives from Encyclopedia Brown and the Red Blazer Girls to the Hardy Boys and Gallagher Girls continue to fly off the shelves in libraries and bookstores.

In middle school, I devoured every Nancy Drew book I could get my hands on before moving on to the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie and Martha Grimes. But I’ve always been looking for a new smart & savvy teen sleuth–and when Veronica Mars premiered during my final years of high school, I knew I’d found my girl.  The character and the show appealed to me then as a young adult and a mystery reader–and it continues to appeal to me now, as a fan of the genre and young adult literature as a whole. Veronica Mars is simply a terrific example of storytelling for and about young adults–in addition to being a great mystery series.

The series can trace a connection to young adult literature back to its initial creation.  Before he brought the teen sleuth back into popular culture, Rob Thomas wrote and published a young adult novel,  Rats Saw God, a 1997 Best Books for Young Adults selection, recently re-released in a new edition.   In an interview with The Austin Chronicle, Thomas explains that his creation of Rats Saw God–and later Veronica Mars–drew on his experiences during his first post-college job as a high school journalism teacher.   So what qualities did Thomas’ writing include that made the show work so well in the world of young adult media?  Continue reading The Mystery of Veronica Mars: Best Teen Sleuth Of Our Time–Or All Time?