Books into Movies 2014: Pam's Take

Several of the highly touted films for this fall are based on books. Increasingly Young Adult books are the source of these films, which leads our Pam to both delight and despair:  delight when one is well adapted and despair when it isn’t.  Pam loves both YA books and movies, so she’s the perfect source for opinions.  Anyone who knows Pam knows that she isn’t afraid to speak her mind, so here are some of her takes on some recent YA films from books:

The Giver, starring Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Brenton Thwaites, and Katie Holmes

Young Jonas has a perfect life in a perfect world.  No war. No fear. No pain. Life is worry free because every person is assigned a particular occupation within the community, leaving no room for competition or trouble. When Jonas meets an elderly man called the Giver, his life changes forever as he begins to see the world is not quite what he had believed it to be.

The movie was based on the classic book The Giver by Lois Lowry.  The book won the Newbery Award when it came out in 1993 and has been a favorite ever since. Lowry has since written three other books set in the same society, Gathering Blue, Messenger and Son.

Pam:  Oh, the disappointment!! I had such high hopes for this film.  The book is wonderful, and they somehow just didn’t get it right.  The age of the kids was a problem for me—they’re much younger in the book—and they changed the ending completely.  Read the book. 

The Maze Runner, starring Dylan O’Brien, Aml Ameen, Ki Hong Lee

When Thomas awakens in the middle of a maze with a group of guys he does not know, he is disturbed to discover that he has no recollection of how he got there or anything else from his past. What Thomas does know is that the maze is not a place for fun or comfort. In this dystopian young adult novel, the group will be forced to survive the horrors that rest inside the maze, all while figuring out how, and if, they can escape.  

The Maze Runner by James Dasher is the first of a trilogy, and based on the reception of the first film, we can expect adaptations of the other two books, Scorch Trials and The Death Cure. Dasher has also written a prequel to The Maze Runner entitled Kill Order.  

Pam: This is, hands down, the BEST adaptation of a YA book to film.  It’s better than the Hunger Games.  I knew this one was going to be big. For one thing, Dylan O’Brien is very popular and a very good little actor.  For another thing, it’s a boy’s movie.  So many of the dystopian books have featured female main characters, and this one doesn’t.  It’s easier to draw boys into this one.  The acting was exceptional, and the story really moved.  You were right there with that kid all the way. It is a great, great movie.  Now, some of my kids who read the book were disappointed because the movie left some things out, but I thought it was great.  Really, the book is another take on Lord of the Flies.  If I were an English teacher today, I’d have the kids read those two books together.  Highly, highly recommended!

If I Stay, starring Chloe Grace Moretz

Mia Hall’s life is drastically changed after a car accident puts her in a coma. An out-of-body experience lets Mia see just how different her life will be if she chooses to wake up. Will she choose to accept her fate or will she choose an unknown future that will be completely different from her previous life? 

The movie is based on the book of the same title by Gayle Forman and has been embraced by a lot of teen readers as well as their parents. There is a sequel, Where She Went.

Pam:  I was pleased with this one as a whole.  It was true to the spirit of the book and Chloe did a good job with the part.  

Mockingjay, Part 1 starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman

The adaptation of the final book of the Hunger Games trilogy, as if you didn’t know! Katniss has survived the Hunger Games twice, but now she faces an even greater test with even higher odds.  The Capital blames her for the unrest and intends to punish not just Katniss but those she loves. With Peeta held hostage, Katriss must decide how much she is willing to sacrifice.

Many credit Suzanne Collins with starting the recent wave of dystopian YA novels; after all, The Hunger Games was not only a best-seller but was the basis for a blockbuster movie.  The sequels, Catching Fire and Mockingjay both proved equally popular in print and film—so popular that the final book is split into two movies, with part one scheduled for November 2014 and part two for 2015.  

Pam:  I’m really curious about this one.  Mockingjay was my least favorite book in this series, but the trailer looks really good.  I have enjoyed the Hunger Games movies.  I think they’ve done a good job with them.  Now, another film I’m looking forward to is Insurgent, based on the second book in the Veronica Roth dystopian series (Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant). Insurgent was my favorite book in that series, but the movie doesn’t come out until 2015.  They did a pretty good job with the first one, and Shailene Woodley is a fine actor. She gave a good performance in The Fault in Our Stars, which was another good YA movie and of course she nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in The Descendants.

Pam Neal Talks John Green!

Welcome back to the bookblog, Pam Neal!  Today we are talking about The Fault in our Stars by John Green, a very popular young adult book which is also being made into an upcoming movie.

Kristin:  Hi Pam, tell our readers all about The Fault in our Stars

Pam:  The Fault in our Stars is about two teenagers who meet at a cancer support group and they fall in love.  I think people relate to Hazel Grace and Augustus.  They are teenagers, and even though they have cancer, they are trying to live normal lives.  It’s funny, it’s quirky, it works with the teen population.  It’s just a great book.  It’s well written—it’s John Green and he’s just great.  People just connect with the characters, especially Hazel Grace.

Kristin:  Augustus is such a big personality and he kind of overwhelms Hazel at first, but soon you see that he is totally captivated by her.  They are very real teenagers.

Pam:  Yes, VERY real teenagers and they are just trying to live very normal teenage lives even though they are sick.  I think Hazel Grace has dwelled more on her sickness because her parents do, but Augustus tries to say “Hey, you’ve got to live your normal life, even though you’re sick.”  He’s got such a happy-go-lucky attitude.  You just love them both immediately, and their friend Isaac too.  It was a feel good book, even though it’s not a feel good book.

Kristin:  So Peter Van Houten is the author who Hazel has been totally obsessed with—An Imperial Affliction is a fictional book by a fictional author.  The author is an American living in Amsterdam and Hazel has written to him wanting to know what happened to the characters after the book ended.

Pam:  I think that is just like true readers who get obsessed about a book.  Right now they are 

obsessed with John Green, and they write to John Green.  “Why’d you do this?  Why’d you do that?  What are you going to do next?”  Of course I related to their obsession with Peter Van Houten.

Kristin:  What do you think about the upcoming movie release for The Fault in our Stars?

Pam:  Sometimes I wish they wouldn’t adapt these really good books to movies, because your expectations are high and I hope this movie is good.  They are taking two of the main actors from Divergent, who played brother and sister, and that is going to be a little disconcerting!  Shailene Woodley—I think she can pull off Hazel Grace.

Kristin:  John Green writes such interesting characters.  Is The Fault in our Stars your favorite John Green book?

Pam:  Looking for Alaska is my favorite, because Alaska is a wonderful character.  I also liked An Abundance of Katherines.  I loved The Fault in our Stars, it’s probably up there in my top ten, but Looking for Alaska is my favorite.  I would love for my kids to get to meet John Green.  I met him at a book signing when The Fault in our Stars came out, but all I could talk to him about at the time was Looking for Alaska.  Getting back to The Fault in our Stars, he was inspired by a wonderful girl, Esther Earl.  I read her diary and it was phenomenal.  We have her book here in the library (This Star Won't Go Out.)  He hit a home run with The Fault in our Stars, mainly because it’s just so true to teen life.  He’s young, and the teens connect with him.  Boys and girls alike identify with the characters.  And it takes a turn in there that was totally unexpected.  You laugh, you cry, it brings out all kinds of emotions.  It was a very good book.

Kristin:  Just from seeing John Green speak one time, and seeing him on his vlogs (video blogs), I think he’s sort of socially awkward, and I think a lot of kids identify with that.

Pam:  They do, a lot of readers feel socially awkward.  I mean, I’m socially awkward.

Kristin:  Most of us feel that way.

Pam:  I’m reading a book right now called Popular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek by Maya Van Wagenen.  Fantastic book, and it’s about a girl who is socially awkward, and she gets an etiquette book from 1951 and follows it.  She talks about the hierarchy of school life and where you fall in the caste system.  The library geeks fall very low in the caste system.  We were laughing about that in book group last night.  The library geeks and all the kids who like the Japanese anime were very low.  But it is a very good book.  It’s hysterical, and it was based on an etiquette book that was really written in 1951.  And of course they kids were saying “Ms Neal, do you remember that book?”  Now that was BEFORE I was born.

Kristin:  Thank you for sharing your thoughts on The Fault in our Stars!

Pam Neal's Book Talk: Divergent

Interview by Kristin

Pam Neal is our young adult librarian extraordinaire.  Pam is known for her ability to match people, especially teens, to books.  This is the first of several blogs devoted to the popular world of young adult literature.  For the uninitiated, here’s a quick blurb on Divergent:

The world has changed.  After a catastrophic war, the surviving leaders made a decision to restructure society.  All individuals were placed into factions, societal groups which put their talents to the best use.  The Abnegation are the Selfless—they live a plain lifestyle and are also trusted to govern the entire society.  The Erudite are the Intelligent—those who seek knowledge to support the betterment of the world.  The Candor are the Honest—seeing everything in black and white, seeking openness to promote a perfect society.  The Amity are the Peaceful—working together and farming to feed the population.  The Dauntless are the Brave—the protectors of the city.  In this society all 16 year olds are given an aptitude test on a certain day of the year, and then choose their faction in a ceremony the next day.  Most stay with the faction they were born into, but some feel the call of another group.  There is a training period for all initiates and they must pass through the challenges before they are full-fledged members of their faction.  If they fail, they live factionless on the outskirts of society, a fate almost worse than death.

Abnegation-born Beatrice (Tris) is 16 years old, and it’s time for her choice of a lifetime.

Kristin:  Thank you for talking to me about Divergent.  I know Divergent is such a popular book right now and that your teen group has really liked it.

Pam:  All of my teen groups have read it.  From tweens all the way up.  That’s why when I took the kids to the movie, there were 59 of them.

Kristin:  You are a brave woman.

Pam:  Well I had other parents!  It’s good to make the comparisons between the books and the movies.  And when you take kids to the movies that have read these books, they’re going to let you know if they don’t like something.

Kristin:  What makes this one special and why is it worth reading?

Pam:  I liked it and I think my kids liked it because it’s dystopian and in this world in the future you have to live in these factions.  You have to live within that faction and you cannot go outside of that realm, or you become “Divergent”.  Divergents threaten the system because they don’t want you have to have a mind of your own.  The faction aspect made this one a lot different.  Now there was some violence, but not nearly what you had in some of the others.  So I think the concept of the factions kind of set it apart.  Of course all these  future dystopians are so negative.  I mean, it’s a negative world!

Kristin:  It seems like founders of the society were trying to set it up as a utopia, but obviously it didn’t work.

Pam:  Right, and so it’s everything just negative, negative, negative in their world.  And I liked the relationships between the kids.

Kristin:  How do you think that your teens related to the “faction before blood” thing?  Is that part of striking out and finding their own identities?

Pam:  I think they had a hard time with the factions at first.  Before all of them read the books, we took the faction quiz to see what faction they would be in.  I gave that to every one of my kids, and of course most of them would find out that they’re not clear cut in a faction, that they are divergent.  When the factions start unraveling, I think they kind of expected that.  But the concept was interesting to them because I don’t think they’d ever thought of that before.  I’d never thought of that before, “Hmmm, let’s put us into a category.”  Because I’ve never fallen into a category!  So I thought the categories were interesting.  Abnegation the selfless, Erudite the intelligent, Dauntless the brave-- Dauntless really caught their attention-- then Amity, the peaceful, which is, if you look at it, the hippies of the sixties.  And Candor, everything’s black or white.  I like the way that in the movie they dressed everybody according to their faction.

Kristin:  And that was described in the book.

Pam:  I liked the way they did that.  I thought it was neat and the kids thought it was too.

Kristin:  So obviously we don’t want to give too much away, but Beatrice, or Tris, and her brother Caleb were both born into Abnegation, and it’s pretty obvious early on that Tris is drawn to Dauntless.

Pam:  It’s really funny when kids read the books—I’m older, but I was never drawn to Dauntless.  There would be no way I would be Dauntless, absolutely none.  Watching some of these kids read it, I would see which way they were drawn to certain things.  Of course I know they painted Dauntless (so that readers would) to be drawn to Dauntless.  I was never drawn to Dauntless, but Tris is, and her brother is drawn to Erudite.  I thought it was interesting how the parents came from different factions too.  I think Four is a very interesting character.

Kristin:  And of course he’s very attractive, in print and in the movie.

Pam:  Yes, I thought the two of them together did an excellent job.

Kristin:  Once you know a little bit more about where he came from, it makes sense that they’d have that attraction to each other.

Kristin:  Will the teens read the rest of the trilogy, Insurgent and Allegiant, in book club?

Pam:  We’ll go to the movies, but this series takes a big turn.  Insurgent—very popular.  Allegiant—very controversial, especially for a young adult series.  I thought Insurgent took Divergent to another level and I enjoyed it.  Then you hit Allegiant which really hits the controversial level.  I liked Divergent better than The Hunger Games because I liked Tris’ character.  I liked Divergent also because it just keeps moving.  Mainly though, I like Tris and Four.

Kristin:  So the characters?

Pam:  I thought it was very character driven.  I was a little bit disappointed in the movie because they didn’t develop the other characters as well.  They left out Uriah, who was one of my favorite characters.  But he’ll have to be in the second movie.  I think Veronica Roth hits Tris’s growing stage.  Tris grows from this little girl, very cowardly in a way, to what she wants to be and I think she does a very good job at that.

Kristin:  Right, because she’s really been groomed to be selfless and only allowed to look in the mirror once every six months. I liked that they carried that over to the movie.

Pam:  I do too.  I liked Katniss in the Hunger Games, but Katniss, to me, she was always right there, always fearless.

Kristin:  She was more of a born leader and was already going out there to provide for her family so it wasn’t as much of a change.

Pam:  But for Tris there was a huge change.  And I think that the kids like that.  I think it’s one of the very few books that I’ve done with all the groups.  It never ceases to amaze me: 43, 44 years I’ve been a librarian with teenagers, boy if they don’t like something, they don’t like it, and they tell you.

Kristin:  It’s good that you’ve got them talking to you.  What other series would you recommend?

Pam:  The Giver by Lois Lowry.  The Giver set the stage for a lot of these dystopians.  It won the Newbery prize.  I did The Giver with kids, and I did A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle because that sets the stage for a lot of these dystopians also.  See, the kids today don’t realize that The Hunger Games was not the first dystopian.  You had Brave New World and you had 1984.  You had quite a few.

Kristin:  It’s all new to them, it’s their generation.

Pam:  The movie I’m interested to see next is The Fault in our Stars by John Green.  Oh, I love that book.  So I’ve decided to alter my whole summer to have a John Green summer.  Except for my tweens—they want to do Neal Shusterman’s Unwind.  Unwind is phenomenal.  And you talk about bringing up a lot of questions!  I just loved The Fault in our Stars.

Kristin:  That should be a good movie though.  I think the writing was very good.

Pam:  Being a librarian for as long as I have, that’s probably one of the best books I’ve read for kids.  I’m glad young adult literature is huge now.  It’s at its peak because lots of adults are reading it.

Kristin:  It is appealing because they tend to be shorter, and they get to the point faster.

Pam:  And they are building good characters that you can identify with.  So it’s really good.  Legend by Marie Lu is another series. The books are Legend, Prodigy, and Champion.  Those characters are good.  Another good one is The Maze Runner by James Dashner.  I did that with my tweens.  The Maze Runner is a modern day Lord of the Flies.  It is excellent—it’ll grab you.

Kristin:  Thank you for talking to me today—it’s always enjoyable to hear you talk about books.