Discussion on:

The Hobbit trilogy effect: More kids' books that should be made into three movies

Ender's Game...

Just because it has children in it doesn't make it a kids' book.

Orson Scott Card said he wrote it for a youth audience. genre: teen my friend.

BTW: I have to ask, you consider The Hobbit a kids book but won't place Enders Game in the same category?

ADDENDUM: I might be misremembering my author sides. Card may have written the short story for a more mature audience and the subsequent novel was expanded and adopted for youth, whereas Tolkien wrote the Hobbit for youth (I think his nephew had a lot of critical input) but was adopted by a more mature audience...

I've started it three or four times over the years. I know it's sacrilege, but I could never get into it and usually gave up after thirty or forty pages. I don't know if it was the story, Tolkien's style, or something else. I do know that it's the reason I haven't attempted anything else of his.

Frankly, I found the first 'Rings' movie boring too. Sure, it was pretty enough, but I just didn't care about any of the characters or what might happen to them. I didn't bother with the subsequent movies.

As long as I'm committing heresy, I thought 'Avatar' was also pretty but boring. There was nothing new about the story, especially for anyone who's read much SF.

If Orson says it's a juvenile, then who am I to argue with him? I enjoyed it immensely but was surprised to find it mentioned in this category. I withdraw the objection.

As "teen audience" "child audience".

Unless, of course, you think the fans of Twilight, Hunger Games, and Mortal Instruments are also simultaneously big fans of Clifford, Dora, or Diego...as opposed to "fans when they were kids, but they grew out of it".

For some reason, I couldn't enter 'T i f f a n y Aching', the lead character. I suspect the spam filter is blocking her first name to keep out bogus jewelry advertisements.

'Wrinkle' was the first book I thought of when I saw the subject under discussion.

You mean I missed a Ralph book? I recall reading a sequel to M&M titled 'Runaway Ralph', but I was well into my 20s when 'Ralph S. Mouse' was published. I hadn't heard of it until now.

For a starter, until this article I've never even heard of the first and third stories mentioned; also The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and the Narnia weren't that big a thing with kids where I grew up, not until the UK TV series about Narnia started showing in the area in the 1970s.

What's sad is the few of the Science Fiction stories the teens I grew up with loved that have been made into movies have NOTHING except the title in common with the books they're supposed to be from.

I wonder how a set of films set in the appropriate eras of the Enid Blyton Famous Five and Secret Seven would go down, or Capt. W.E.Johns' Biggles series stories - especially those from WW1 as a fighter pilot.

It won the Newbery and was required reading in schools in the U.S. in the '70s. And I can't imagine a childhood without Ralph.

Thanks for the comment!

being In Australia it's very unlikely any US based thing for children, other than kids TV shows, would have been mentioned out here prior to the 1990s or specialist circles. Add in I was in full-time work in December 1970 and you can see why there's damn little chance I'd have heard of it.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Should try to do a decent job of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonrinders of Pern series! I've heard rumors that it's in the works, but nothing concrete. Enough books and stories to do a quintology, let alone a trilogy, and CGI? How else would they do the dragons? Companion works could be anything from the four hundred year history of the series, an intro of the last battle of the Nathi War, the probe that first surveyed P.E.R.N., or even something from one of her other series (Ship Who Sang, Crystal Singer, Doona, you name it). The only caveat is that it might not be considered a "children's book" due to the nature of some of the scenes (think dragon mating flight).

nt

'Ender' I guess I could see, but do you really regard Honor Harrington as children's material? The third or fourth book features her lover being assassinated for as revenge against her, and the sixth or so features she and her companion animal being maimed.

Or am I that out of touch with today's pre- and adolescents?

They don't have graphic sex scenes, and it's well known people have lovers. I was looking at the same sort of audience the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit are supposedly aimed at, which I was under the impression of as being the 12 and up group, year 7 onwards. But of you want to limit it to say ten years old and under, you would exclude Webber, but you'd also have to exclude Tolkien as well - and he was in the original list.

A lot of the stuff I read in the first years of high school recognised the concept of lovers - especially the stuff by Shakespear.

Seems to be about puberty. There are children who've been allowed to watch that Saw crap. When I was a kid my parents wouldn't have been allowed to watch that.

I've watched any number of zombie movies, big Walking Dead fan, like John Carpenter stuff.

But I'm not a fan of the Slasher genre, and Saw seems to me to be torture.

My kids have never seen it.

I don't get the appeal of dismemberment.

When it happens to zombies or monsters....

Given how adult kids are commercially forced in to being now, I's make the distinction between children's novel and a novel suitable for 'erm young adults.
MacCaffrey, Norton (Breed to come would be good choice), Cherryh (Finity's end?).

All depends on what you want to say really, after all you wouldn't give the Original Grimm's fairy tails to a child would you? You could make the Hobbit alarming without departing from story line as well.

But then again, I read and watched much worse when I was a child. Depends on the child really, some are developed enough to handle it and some aren't, most don't really understand any of it because society and parents try to wrap them in swaddling cloths until they magically become adults themselves.

It seems to me that people nowadays spend more effort trying to keep kids from growing up and "protecting them from the world's horrors", when their time would be better spent actually talking to their kids and helping them learn about life, the world, and imagination (light and dark sides).

Talk to a kid, you may find out that they understand far more about the world around them than you give them credit for.

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Alan Garner has a trilogy...
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Moon of Gomrath and Boneland

As a young teenager The Weirdstone of Brisingamen kept me awake with nightmares lol but is a brilliant book. Please, please please read the second edition - even adults will like it.

I believe that Peter Jackson has a sequel in the making for Spielberg's "The Adventures of Tintin".

Speaking of CGIs, there are a lot of great tales that can be made into movies now with CGIs and some remakes of earlier flops.

It will just result in better looking flop. No amount of visuals is going to save a weak story.

Don't hold your breath.

The really incredible hulk
The most phantomest phantom ever
A greener lantern
Thor with bollocks
The Sparkliest ever vampire than ever sparkled...

In order to achieve what you describe, many people would have to have an imagination implant and probably graft a spine in as well.

Why if you going to make big use of CGI, would you repeat tired old drivel?

Who want's to see Axis City power off down the Way to expunge the Jarts?

Coltayn and the Chain of Dogs?

Pyanfar Chanur droppinbg into Kita point.

Do some real stuff.

Any three consecutive chapters by CJ Cherryh would be too much for Hollywood to coherently adapt. Look at its track record with really broad, deep SF mythologies. One word: Dune.