Modelling opportunity for blue-eyed brunettes

While editing my reviews for the upcoming Fall 2011 Horn Book Guide, Elissa spotted these:

From the last Guide:

Apparently, the heroine of a paranormal YA romance must be an extra-pale, blue-eyed brunette with her hair in her (partial) face—at least, if I'm going to review it.

—Katie Bircher

Gardening with The Lorax

As the public becomes increasingly worried by climate change and deforestation, Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax, originally published in 1971, may be more relevant than ever before. With its unforgettable characters and sentiment, the classic is an entertaining and informative way of introducing young children to environmental issues.

Unfortunately, The Lorax Garden app (Oceanhouse Media) pales in comparison. The aim of the app is to restore barren forests by digitally raising flowers and Truffula trees. The process of doing so is unnecessarily complicated and seems to involve more steps than growing an actual tree. First, you must choose one of five locations, each with a forest in need of a facelift. To be successfully revived, every forest needs a different amount of full-grown Truffulas, ranging from three to nine. In the world of The Lorax Garden, raising a Truffula tree requires a combination of “care hearts,” water, and time. When you enter a new location, you receive ten care hearts, but they run out quickly. Though the needed number varies, it can take more than half of your allotted care hearts to raise one full-grown Truffula tree. To get more care hearts, you must grow one of six varieties of flowers, requiring water, pollination, and weeding—all in under a minute, as the section is timed. Growing each type of flower differs in difficulty and in how many care hearts you earn. Are you confused yet? Me too.

Here’s what I know for sure: reviving one of the forests in The Lorax Garden is a fairly significant investment of time. Add the time it takes to grow flowers to that required to grow a Truffula tree and you’re looking at well over an hour to restore a forest of nine Truffulas. But don’t worry: you probably won’t finish. Unless you’re one of those people who have to finish what they’ve started, you’ll be frustrated and/or terribly bored after growing just one or two Truffula trees. And if The Lorax Garden can’t hold the attention of a book- and garden-loving adult like myself, it surely won’t be a pleasant experience for children.

So do yourself and your children a favor. Forgo The Lorax Garden app. Read the picture book with your kids and use the $1.99 the app would have cost to buy a sapling or some seeds—real ones, not the pixelated kind brought to you by the Apple device of your choice. Plant them in your yard and bring The Lorax to life. Dr. Seuss would have preferred it that way.

—Laura Marenghi

Alanna redux

As a Horn Book intern, I’m on the Out of the Box frontlines: I open the boxes and see what’s in them first. I recently came across the new paperback edition of Tamora Pierce’s The Woman Who Rides like a Man (left), the third book in the Song of the Lioness Quartet (Simon and Schuster, April). As a fan of the series, I was taken aback by the new cover, which features a photographed Alanna, the protagonist of the series, with magenta-dyed hair, in modern clothes and makeup, and flanked by two teenage boys. The Alanna I picture is a combination of my own imagination and Joyce Patti’s softly illustrated cover portraying a ginger-haired heroine (1997 Random House edition, right).

My discomfort with this new edition lies not in the decision to change the cover image, but with my worry that the new art does not accurately represent the story to a new generation of readers. If I were unfamiliar with the plot—about newly knighted Alanna’s journey to Tortall’s desert and her capture and acceptance by the Bloody Hawk tribe—I would guess from the new cover that it‘s about a contemporary teenage girl who has a magic pendant and is caught in a love triangle a lá Twilight.

Looking at this edition reminds me of some of my other favorite books that have been reissued with new covers, some of which I’ve grown to appreciate (the 2007 edition of Natalie Babbitt’s The Search for Delicious)

and some of which I have not (any post-Trina Schart Hyman editions of Patricia C. Wrede’s The Enchanted Forest Chronicles).

Which original cover art do you think shouldn’t be tampered with? Which new covers are welcome updates?

—Kazia Berkley-Cramer

Mr. Popper goes to the movies

Last Friday, Mr. Popper’s Penguins opened in movie theaters. It is very loosely based on the beloved 1938 novel by Richard and Florence Atwater, which focuses on an absent-minded house painter who longs to travel to the Poles. The novel’s Mr. Popper receives a gift of twelve penguins from Admiral Drake in response to a letter Mr. Popper sent him about the explorer’s last expedition. Throughout the book, Mr. Popper’s quiet, caring, and thoughtful personality never waivers.

The film’s “Popper” (played by Jim Carrey) is significantly different. A cold-hearted, self-centered man, Carrey’s Popper is too focused on his career to appreciate his two children. However, his heart begins to thaw after the surprise arrival of six Gentoo penguins sent by his recently deceased father (a frequently absent explorer). Jim Carrey’s performance feels forced and inconsistent, with his character waffling between business shark, clueless dad, and Jim Carrey Being Jim Carrey. I often found it difficult to feel sympathy for Popper (although the authors of the screenplay should take at least partial blame for this), and subplots that had the potential to make his character easier to relate to (his feelings about his neglectful father, for example) were abruptly dropped and only sporadically picked back up. The film lacks the sweet gentleness that makes the book so special, and while the CGI-enhanced penguins provide plenty of slapstick and potty humor, the movie generally falls flat and is at best passably amusing. If you need to escape the heat, it’s an adequate summer diversion—but definitely nothing more.

—Kazia Berkley-Cramer

Making Over Uglies

Digging through a box of books the other day, I came across what I thought was a new Scott Westerfeld book. “Yay!” said my brain—until I realized the title read Uglies. “Wait, what?” I thought. “This isn’t Uglies!”

The "trilogy plus one" is receiving a full redesign (in hardcover, no less) by publisher Simon Pulse, from the covers to trim size and page design. While the new jacket for Extras does pay homage to the original, the new Uglies cover with its haunting covered face bears a closer resemblance to the opening credits of the (adult) TV show Dexter than it does to the original cover. The new Pretties cover reminds me of another grown-up show, Nip/Tuck, making me wonder if the makeovers are an attempt to market the books to an older audience. Though the new covers don’t appeal to me personally, I’ve seen plenty of positive buzz about them online from adult bloggers.

 

I feel these remakes lack the pizzazz of the original books: their smaller size, mysterious teenaged faces, and eye-catching spines. And while the images on the new covers are startling (as is the use of sterile white), they just don't do justice to the uniqueness of Westerfeld’s dystopian world. Ironically, the new versions look like New Pretty Town–style extreme makeovers of the originals—sexed-up and stripped down. I’m the first to admit I can be averse to change, but in this case, change seems unnecessary and a little compromising. What do you think?

—Cindy Ritter