Adaptation

With the number of YA novels that have been, are in the process of being, and will be adapted to film, it is clear that YA literature has forged its way into Hollywood. Nothing gets people to read a book more than it becoming a movie; I haven’t seen our copies of Paper Towns or Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children all year.

Now, I’m going to be real - I tend not to read a lot of the books being made into movies; I just watch the movies instead. [An aside: I have read The Giver (a classic), The Hunger Games trilogy (I’m good on dystopian), I recently read A Monster Calls (I love Patrick Ness novels), and I do plan on reading Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.] Does that make me a bad librarian? I don’t think so. Most of those books (or series) are already popular and don’t need much book talking to be read. I like to read the books that kids don’t already know about. If I’m really being honest, I’m kind of a book snob, just like I’m kind of a music snob. I want to read books that I’m interested in - that are a little more intellectual or artsy or quirky or darkly humorous; for example, I LOVE Andrew Smith novels, and my kids love them too - but I have to book talk them; most kids don’t just grab Winger from the shelf like they do Divergent. I do make an effort to read different genres, but I try to avoid the mainstream. I like to find those literary gems that require a little more digging because they shine that much brighter in the hands of my students. So, having decided I don’t want to read a particular book, I don’t mind seeing the movie, and having seen the movie, I definitely don’t want to read the book. That’s the cycle. BUT there are always exceptions, and those exceptions are a testament to the film industry’s artistry and expertise.

Now, to the confusion of some, I am not going to discuss the Academy Award-winning Room. I saw it; it was good. But it didn’t make me want to read the book. Instead... I would like to highlight the punch in the face that was Deadpool. I’m not a comic book, superhero fan - I’ve always left that to my brother. As I posted before, I read and loved Derf Backderf's graphic novel My Friend Dahmer, but that’s about the extent of my graphic novel experience... so, it was to my surprise that Deadpool captured my interest enough for me to read outside of my preferred genre and format - because, after having watched the movie this weekend, I checked out and read Night of the Living Deadpool today. I realize it’s a different story line than that of the film, but I wanted to see if the comic held the same sarcastically cynical dark humor that the film conveyed. To my delight, it did. I don’t know the whole Deadpool history with X-Men and what not, but I was pleasantly surprised and entertained by Cullen Bunn’s graphic novel (review coming soon). It embodied the same wit and shock-value that made the film thrive. 

For the most part, it’s a given that the book is going to be better than the movie - I realize that - even when I choose to watch a movie, rather than read the book - but, again, it’s the exceptions that help regain your faith in the movie industry. I'm not saying the film is better than the graphic novel, but they are equally well done. Perhaps, Deadpool was such a success because of its format - graphic novels are already cinematic - it seems much more natural to adapt a graphic novel to film because they're both visual entities. Although, I’ve seen X-Men and Spiderman and Captain America, etc. [everyone loves Batman], but I’ve never been the least bit interested in reading those comics. For me, I think the appeal of Deadpool is that he’s much more human than he is superhuman. He’s a mixed character - dark and light - he’s so much more relatable, and he’s a result of good intentions gone bad. Who can’t empathize with that? Not to mention that I loved the “boy humor,” though I’m not a boy, so it’s just humor, I guess, and the fantastic allusions to my generation’s pop culture (“Shoop,” Salt-N-Pepa; Sinead O'Conner). In fact, I would say that the pop cultural allusions are one of the major factors that it was so appealing to me and successful, in my opinion - it made me feel like this movie was made for me, for my generation. All in all, ​Deadpool ​is a cinematic thrill ride in film AND graphic novel format - TAKE THE RIDE.      

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