Book To Film #NetflixKids Style

My daughter and I had a very lazy weekend. Initially I felt some guilt at the amount of time we spent at home watching television but I realized that the majority of our viewing was related to books and I wanted to share some of the things my teen and I checkout this weekend while watching Netflix.

Ever After High

Shannon Hale’s Ever After High: The Storybook of Legends was a huge hit with my daughter. When we got an advanced reader’s copy of the book she devoured the story of the children of fairy tale characters. She was sympathetic to Raven Queen’s unhappiness with her destiny of being “evil” and her dilemma of changing the fate of other characters should Raven alter her own destiny. I haven’t read the book yet but loved the extension of the world of fairy tale characters. The cartoon is cute; full of puns, hidden jokes and fun characters.

About Ever After High: The Ever After High storyline is based on the children of famous fairytale characters attending high school. The children are destined to follow in their parents’ footsteps to keep their stories alive through generations. If they do not, their stories will cease to exist and they will disappear.

Battle Royale

Admittedly this is not for all audiences but The Bee and I enjoyed the movie and have enjoyed the book. Battle Royale: The Novel is the story of junior high school students who are forced to fight each other to the death in a program run by the authoritarian Japanese government, now known as the Republic of Greater East Asia. This movie is a cross between Stephen King’s The Long Walk and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games series. Be warned, there is graphic, gratuitous violence but there is also a story about survival, human kindness and interaction and how fear will make people react differently to things.

Vampire Diaries

I will admit that I have become a bit “vampired” out as soon as my daughter has started to become enchanted with vampires. The Bee had begun reading The Awakening (The Vampire Diaries, Vol. 1) and has introduced me to the series and re-introduced me to a world of vampires.  While I am feeling lukewarm to vampires, it warms my heart that my teen is starting to read books with plots featuring love triangles. I fondly remember my lazy afternoons as a teen reading and re-reading my favorite books featuring unrequited love and hoping that the right one was picked.

About The Vampire Diaries: The series follows the protagonist Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev) as she falls in love with vampire Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley) and is drawn into the supernatural world as a result. As the series progresses, Elena finds herself drawn to Stefan’s brother Damon Salvatore (Ian Somerhalder) resulting in a love triangle.

Hugo

The year that The Invention of Hugo Cabret won The Caldecott Award, I had a child walking around with this huge book telling me all about how she was glad she wasn’t an orphan.

About Hugo: The plot of Hugo is about a boy who lives alone in the Gare Montparnasse railway station in Paris. It is directed and co-produced by Martin Scorsese and adapted for the screen by John Logan. The film stars Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Helen McCrory, Ray Winstone, Emily Mortimer, Jude Law, and Christopher Lee. We both agreed that we didn’t enjoy the movie as much as we loved the book but it’s still a good movie to spark a discussion about automaton’s. (I voted for something that would do the dishes and The Bee thought we there should be an automaton to do some of her homework).

Avalon High

Seriously? What can’t Meg Cabot do? First she enchanted me, er, us with Princess Mia and The Princess Diaries. Now her series, Avalon High, combines fantasy, magic, King Arthur and high school. We have a twist on who rules the kingdom and a re-imagining of Camelot.

About Avalon High: Ellie Harrison has just moved to Annapolis, Maryland. Her new school, Avalon High, seems like a typical high school with the stereotypical students: Lance the jock, Jennifer the cheerleader, Marco, the bad boy/desperado, and Will, the senior class president, quarterback, the student every girl wants and all around good guy. But not everyone at Avalon High is who they appear to be, not even Ellie herself.

While we can enjoy time together watching television and sharing books, I am enjoying time with my teen to chat about books, characters and her point of view about images we see. It’s been a very good couple of days to learn about new books, revisit series and have some unscheduled downtime.

Tell me…what are you reading or hoping to see come to life? Let me know in the comments!

-r

Disclosure: Affiliate links are used in this post. If you click on the link and make a purchase, I will make a small commission.