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May 12, 2008
Totally Cheesy Tie-Ins for This Summer’s Kids’ Films
[Editor’s Note: Many thanks to Shana at WPL for compiling the list of films I have so clearly cut-and-pasted.]
If you work in a public library, then what you know is that kids are going to be coming in ALL SUMMER LONG looking for film tie-ins. I know some librarians are morally opposed to tie-ins, and there are ones I flatly refuse to buy (see “May 16” below), but I loved reading junior novelizations when I was a kid, and I’d like to honor that love in today’s kids. So, if you’re looking to please the masses, look no further than:
May 9 - Speed Racer
I’m going to go with the junior novelization, Born to Race: A Price Stern Sloan Junior Novel by Michael Anthony Steele (0843132108), and the paperback beginning reader, Go, Speed Racer, Go!: A Price Stern Sloan Reader by Sophia Kelly (0843132116). Paperback beginning reader tie-ins are particularly great because they make okay read-alouds for kids who are too young to read the junior novelizations and I refuse—REFUSE—to buy those crappy paperback picture book tie-ins. What I like about junior novelizations and paperback beginning reader tie-ins is that they fill a flash-in-the-pan demand very inexpensively.
Speed Racer is also a manga series. Which came first—the cartoon or the manga? I have no idea.
May 16 - The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Repeat after me: “I will not buy any of those blasphemous Prince Caspian tie-ins. C.S. Lewis writes the only version of Prince Caspian that my library will own.”
Good job.
May 23 - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
The best thing about this is that I read all three of the original Indiana Jones junior novelizations when they were out back in the day, and now they’re being REPRINTED (WOO!): Raiders Of The Lost Ark by Ryder Windham (0545007003), Temple Of Doom by Suzanne Weyn (0545042550), and Last Crusade by Ryder Windham (0545042569). Those smart people at Scholastic are also publishing the current film’s novelization, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull by James Luceno (0545007011). Plus DK is making Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Guide (0756635004).
June 6 - Kung Fu Panda
I cannot muster up an opinion about Kung Fu Panda, although DreamWorks seems pretty gung-ho about the whole thing and tie-ins abound. Until children start coming into the library screaming for Kung Fu Panda books at the tops of their little lungs, I think I’ll stick with the junior novelization by Susan Korman (0061434639) and a couple Kung Fu Panda beginning readers—Meet the Masters (0061434604) and Po’s Crash Course (0061434612).
June 20 - Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
The REAL mystery of the summer is whether a feature film will bring the American Girls back to the popularity they enjoyed ten years ago because, well, the girls have faded. The beautiful thing about this film is that your library probably already owns most of the tie-ins since the Pleasant Company published them years before they made the movie, so you don’t have to take much of a financial risk on this one.
June 27 - WALL*E
The reason this film is irritating is because you cannot search “wall*e” in anything on account of the way the asterisk is a truncation symbol, and so the computer thinks you’re looking for the eternal permutations of “wall” (“walls,” “walling,” “wallers,” “wallpaper,” etc.). Stupid, stupid.
August 15 - Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Duh. Besides that, you already own these, right? RIGHT???
Posted by adrienne at May 12, 2008 07:56 PM
Comments
Kid's films you say? I'm trying to figure out how to make it to make it to the 12:01am Indiana Jones show at Lowe's Webster on the 5/22 and still get up for work at 6am. I would have thought nothing of it back in 1981, but I was a LOT younger then. (As was Indy).
Posted by: Steph at May 13, 2008 04:56 PM
Steph, Indy is totally an all-ages thing. :) I think I'm going to wind up seeing it Saturday night that week. We're taking Lucas, and Tammy and I are going to her school's prom that Friday night.
Posted by: adrienne at May 13, 2008 08:35 PM
Oooh, Born to Race and Go, Speed Racer, Go sound like they'll have high appeal this summer and beyond. Thanks for the other ideas too!
Posted by: Laura Baas at May 14, 2008 06:06 PM
Thanks, Laura! It's true that it's hard to go wrong with books about race cars. :)
Posted by: adrienne at May 14, 2008 08:19 PM
Have you read the newest American Girl books about Julie? They are set in 1974 in San Francisco. I read half of the Julie books two weekends ago and the other half last weekend, plus the Ivy book. I dug all of them. Go Megan McDonald! Go Lisa Yee! Go Robert Hunt! (Julie looks a lot like BSC Dawn Schafer!)
Posted by: Little Willow at May 18, 2008 07:10 PM
I haven't, though I've been interested in the Julie ones because they seem so different from some of the ones they've had in the past. So far, my favorite American Girl is Josefina.
Posted by: adrienne at May 18, 2008 09:41 PM