Friday “Why?”: Why does every single love interest have to have “amazingly dark green eyes”?

Does every heroine have to have red hair and every love interest “amazingly dark green eyes”? (EVERNIGHT sparked this complaint, but believe you me, it ain’t just that book.)

The first line in this book's blurb?
'The only beautiful thing in Ivy's drab life is her glorious red hair.'

Ages ago someone named Joelle Anthony posted the red hair thing as #2 (for best friends, but I think it goes for “feisty” protagonists too) in her list of cliches in young adult and middle grade fiction. (She doesn’t have the “amazingly dark green eyes” thing, but she does have “Guys with extraordinarily long eyelashes” — and I can attest that it’s always put in that exact phrase, too.)

How many of these cliches have you noticed, and how many bother you? A huge number struck a chord with me — either as things I’ve been annoyed by myself (“Using coffee, cappuccino, and café latte to describe black people’s skin”) or things that hadn’t really occurred to me, but upon reading, seemed Duh!-worthy (“Using the word ‘rents for parents, but not using any other slang”).

But her ironic choice for #1 (“Lists”) doesn’t do it for me, mostly because I don’t care how often this is done, I love it always and forever — whether it’s Anastasia Krupnik or Bud E. Caldwell’s Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself.

Emily already mentioned how THE PRINCESS BRIDE is one of the few kids’ books to have been made into a genuinely good movie, but one thing the book does do better comes from its lists: in the movie, when it ends with history’s greatest kiss blah blah blah, it’s a little bit irredeemably cheesy; but in the book, where the narrator’s been obsessively ranking everything about Buttercup all along, it fits perfectly.

The Princess Bride and the naivete of (my) youth

I wanted to buy this, but was too disturbed by the cover; when you see it in the store, it doesn't even look like Cary Elwes and Robin Wright Penn!

Many blog readers have probably seen the movie THE PRINCESS BRIDE, where screenwriter William Goldman uses the framing device of a young kid (played by Fred Savage, a.k.a. THE WONDER YEARS’s Kevin Arnold) being read to by his grandfather, with all appropriate dubiousness about the book’s romantic elements.

Fewer have probably read the book that came first, also by Goldman. Starting in third grade, I read it over and over for many years (much as I had obsessively watched the movie from a younger age, until my mother taped over part of it with the six o’clock news, and no I am not still bitter, but only just barely).

Here, Goldman uses a different framing device: he presents the book as being culled from an old academic history, inserting editorial notes into the text where he has removed “a two hundred page digression on the history of the Florish crown” and similar.

The embarassing part: I did not get that this was all Goldman’s invention, at all. I was in high school when I was earnestly explaining to my friend Seth what a great book this is and how Goldman had really improved it from the original by deleting all this boring stuff, when he — entirely from my description — said, “But you know he made all that up, right?”

I just looked at him.

The really embarassing part is that if he hadn’t said that, I sincerely don’t know how long it would have taken me. Would I have a vague sense, to this day, that the history of Florin and its royal intrigues is something I really ought to know more about? We’ll never know.

I’m skeptical

I have been a silent blogging partner for the past week or so due to craziness at work, but I’m back in action now, with lots of stored up Things To Say, which will trickle out as soon as I can type them up.

For starters, two beloved classic picture books are apparently being made into movies. Of course, there are the obvious issues with making books into movies, and how the movies are not as good 98% of the time.* But I think there’s specific difficulty in making a picture book into a feature length movie, b/c inevitably you have to add in all kinds of extra stuff that’s left unsaid, only implied, or just absolutely not there in the book, and in doing so I think you really change the whole nature of the thing. I guess its actually similar to the overall problem of adapting any book to a movie, but the length issue with picture books adds a layer to me.

But, there’s money to be made, so we got HORTON HEARS A WHO (which I didn’t see, although I suppose in the interest of the blog I should add it to my netflix list), and now there’s a movie version of Maurice Sendak’s WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is in the works. 100 Scope Notes (and various others, but I saw it there first) has the trailer.

I will say that the trailer looks promising visually. But I’m still anxious about what they might do to this book that’s so dear to my heart. Frankly, I don’t want there to be a WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE movie – even if its a good movie. In all these years, I’ve never felt like “man, they should make a movie of that.” For me, this one just is a book, down to its very core, quintessential self. And if they’re making it into a full-length movie, they’re bound to add in all kinds

There’s also a trailer out for a movie version of CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS, by Judi Barrett. I think it looks a lot like every other children’s animated movie that’s come out lately. Which is not to say it won’t be an enjoyable movie. But if I ruled the world, I don’t think it would get made.

*My only personal exceptions to the rule are: The Princess Bride; Lord of the Rings; Wind in the Willows. What are yours?