Apparently I misjudged my family in offering to review this particular film. On its arrival, I handed it to dh (who if you don’t know is called Max) and he immediately said “I hated that book when I was a kid. The boy is called Max and he wears a stupid suit. I’m not watching it.'”
Well, hello… Somebody has issues!
And he didn’t watch it either. Some people just don’t know when it’s time to get over something 😉
Bizarrely enough, I’ve never read the book. I can picture it very clearly on the shelf of my classroom at school but I was such an early reader that I turned up my nose at books with pictures. We’ve never had it in the house for the girls either. I don’t know why (it may be partly that I hate picture books a little bit to be honest) but it sits alongside Each Peach Pear Plum in my head as a classic I have never read.
On the evening I gave the girls the film to watch, Bene was being hideously fussy. I assumed, because the tend to quite like fantasy, they’d love it. I didn’t get to sit in the room with them because I had to quell a ferocious beastie of my own so I have to review it by proxy. That would be an excellent way to describe it if proxy meant ‘shoe horn comments out of children by coercion and threatened supper less nights’.
The story is of a boy (Max, yes, could be worse dear, I’ve met plenty of Alsatians with your name too) who is sent to bed without supper for misdemeanours involving a wolf costume (I got that bit from the Internet, the children were hazy on the details) and goes off into an imaginary land where he stares down monsters and becomes king before coming home to bed. I would imagine he’s improved by this experience. I am going to watch the film though, just to check.
The girls said “it was quite good that they made a film out of a short book but not enough happened” and followed that up with ” the special effects were good but it all felt a bit dark”. Maddy said “it was very good at making you feel like you were really there, the atmosphere was exactly how it should be for the story… It’s just I didn’t like the thought of being in it”. Fran said “I should have done something else” but she is 14.
Josie said (and I quote) “the costumes were very scary but I don’t think they looked like real monsters”. Honestly, I don’t know quite where you go with a statement like that 🙄
Overall opinion was that had they been younger boys who had read the book, they might have liked it more. Sigh.
We are, even if it is not immediately obvious, very grateful to have had the opportunity to review this film thanks to the Tots100 Film Club and very much appreciated being sent the DVD for free. I suspect my nieces will be gratefuller.
(Sally, seriously, I’m really sorry. I did try to extract positive things out of them but to no avail on this occasion *blush* )
If nothing else, this review made me giggle quite a lot!
My work here is done 😉
Why do you hate picture books? How can you justify such barbarism!
Uh oh.
I don’t know. The number of times children want to have them read again? I’m deeply scarred by Harry and his bloody dinosaurs. I get bored easily, I like reading long books. Maybe I’ll be different with Bene now I’m slower paced and more patient. I think. I was a bit ADHD with the girls.
Maybe because I was such an early reader that I never valued them myself? Pressure!
Tell you what though, my sister (iPad altered that to disaster, how rude!) and I had one I loved. Have never been able to find it. It was of a little girl journeying through lands of the colour of the rainbow. Have always wanted to get it for us.
If I hadn’t been struggling to comment on my new phone I would have added a winky face of course! My test of a really good picture book was if it stood up to the inevitable multiple readings. We had (have, I keep them in boxes in my bedroom in case they get damaged by the heat in the loft… yes, they’re that precious to me…) many that passed that test. Writers like Shirley Hughes never ceased to entertain me – no matter how many times I read the book. This was partly because the illustrations were so rich, I think.
If I did get a bit tired of a book I’d often develop it by giving the characters different voices (a chance to do really appalling regional accents in the privacy of your own home) or change the pace. Dr Seuss books can be a riot if you try to read them as fast as you can – Scrambled Eggs Super is a good one for that.
There are lots of new picture book authors and illustrators since I stopped buying for my kids and I encounter these at work – people like Emily Gravett, Mini Grey, David Lucas. But Sendak, Sendak was a genius…
I haven’t seen the film of Where the Wild Things Are because I am scared it would irritate me. I have just seen that they are releasing a film of The Lorax, which fills me with horror as it was one my children’s favourites. There’s something about the world of a picture book that just I don’t want burst with a Hollywood film.
You may have spotted that this is one of my ultimate passions. I am just ridiculously evangelical about picture books.
Clearly touched a nerve here! 😉
I tell you what Allie, write me a guest post of your ten favourite picture books and I’ll promise to read Bene all of them 🙂
Can’t imagine how a film was made from such a dull book. We have the book – given to us not bought as I remember having to do some kind of project work on it at school and disliked it then. None of the children ever looks at it.
You can kill any book with a project. Nearly managed that with war horse!
Nope, the dislike was there before the project. I think Max’s quote sums it up perfectly for me.
Just dull.
DOI – also an early reader so maybe there is something in that?
To be honest I think they gave a fair review……. It’s an awkward movie, failing to meet the expectations of the book’s various generations of audience.
It was reassuring to read you didn’t know the book yourself. I too was an early reader and never knew Where the Wild Things Are. Yet amongst my friends and colleagues it seems to be much revered.
Funny isn’t it. Like the Each Peach one. Never motivated myself past the cover.
Loved the book as a kid, my kids love the book. So we made the effort to see it at the cinema and it’s one of the few times the kids came out feeling disappointed. My now 9 yr old (she wasn’t then, when was it at the cinema?) said something along the lines of, “The costumes and monsters were good but why did they make so much of everything?”
I love sharing picture books with my kids, but ask me to read full novels aloud and I’ll do just about anything to get out of it, including buying the audio book!
We had “Where the Wild Things Are” when I was little. I don’t remember whether I liked it or not. But I am going to have to hit you over the head with a large pile of really good picture books. I might start with “Each Peach Pear Plum”, or maybe “Peepo” which is even better. I also love “The Baby’s Catalogue”. As a child, we had one called “Millions of cats” which I loved, but I don’t have it now – must do something about that. Another favourite of mine was “Sally’s Secret” – in fact I can remember the feeling I got when I read it and it just sums up childhood for me. Another one that had a similar effect on me was “The Winter Bear”. There’s something about the combination of really well written prose and evocative illustrations that I think is magical. I was also a very early reader, loved long books and was happy to make up the pictures in my head. But I read and listened to the picture books as well (probably for longer because I had a younger brother who wasn’t interested in learning to read early!) I think if you ditch the badly written dross, and even the average stuff, and only have in the house the ones that are brilliant, you should be safe from boredom, though I admit that endless repetition is tiresome however good the book. My answer to “Read it again” is usually go and ask daddy (or a big brother!)
Oh my god Millions of Cats! I’d forgotten all about that book. I’m off to buy a copy right this minute (thanks be to internet shopping!)
And for Merry, I cringe when Angus gets the longer books out! I am very thankful when he reaches for Each Peach Pear Plum. If you haven’t read it, I can recite it for you right now if you like. Read it just one or two times!!
xo
I have just ordered a copy of Millions of Cats – I love Ebay:-)
We love Peepo!
We are obviously rather odd in my house, we love the book and the film! I bought the book for India when she was a toddler, funnily enough she loved it, but Angus and Sid were afraid of the illustrations and refused to let me read it to them! (I don’t think Eden was bothered much at all)
We saw the movie at the cinema, and we all loved it, I thought it summed up rather nicely that anger and rage and bubbling up of wild energy I’ve seen in my children at times. :0/
Merry, I think I have that girl travelling through a rainbow world book! It was my favourite one too. Quite large, Orange is a giant, green is a parrot? She has a teddy who ends up with a ribbon? Let me find it on amazon…….
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Once-Upon-Rainbow-Gabriele-Eichenauer/dp/0224018426/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343112595&sr=8-1
I will be seriously impressed if you can locate it. I have failed for years. But then, you are Super Hannah, so don’t let me down now!
Is this it?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Once-Upon-Rainbow-Gabriele-Eichenauer/dp/0224018426/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343112595&sr=8-1
Hannah! You are a miracle!!! (Give that woman a payrise!)