Library Program: Read a Movie

Did you enter my latest giveaway? 

Click here for Barry's Book Blogger Giveaway!

This library program was just a smidge different from others, as it took place over two separate evenings, a week apart. My Book Cafe group selected a book that also had a movie counterpart (and that the library owned enough copies of), and we read the book, and the following week we watched the movie. The book that the group chose to read/watch was I am Number Four by James Frey's fiction farm Pittacus Lore. I'm not going to rehash the book for you; feel free to check out my review here. This post will focus more on the actual programs.

The book discussion went over very well, I thought. We had about 15 teens in attendance (which is just awesome for my branch!), and 7 of them had actually read the book. We were able to discuss the various components of the book without revealing too many spoilers, and the teens who hadn't read the book were interested enough to actually put it on hold after we were done!

The following week we held the movie program, and I had 19 teens attend (woohoo!). I find it's really hard to host a movie program, because I'm constantly shushing the kids, they just won't shut the heck up and our sound system isn't that spectacular. Still, it held their interest.

Here are the things that occurred to me as I was watching the movie--I did a lot of WTH while we were watching (the "H," of course, is Heck):

• I totally get the hype over Alex Pettyfer. How old is he--is he too young for me to find attractive? (heads to Wikipedia--hmmm, 21...OK, I can swoon!) But he does NOT look 15.
• WTH with the Mogadorians? They were NOT at all as I pictured them (although I was constantly referring to them as Muppets, which means they REALLY didn't fit my my preconceived notions LOL)
• And the home ec class, that was the ENTIRE premise of how Hottie Alex and that girl met and got together? Yeah, where was that?
• And SAM? NOT into aliens? WTH??
• Movie Henri could never have been mistaken for a Frenchman.
• John knows nothing about his Legacies. NOTHING.
• BERNIE KOSAR HAD NO TAGS.
• The Spring Carnival. In its entirety. Everything was wrong with this.
• Movie Mark did not have the opportunity to show us his growth and maturity like Book Mark (hee hee) did.
• The chest was not so much of a chest as a fancy shoebox.
• SAM'S DAD. That was NOT information we were given in the book. I kind of inferred it, but it was never explicitly said, and I figured it would be explained more in the upcoming sequel(s).

I really could go on and on. I was trying to explain this to my teens and I don't think they got it. As a movie, I thought it was pretty good. It's not what I normally gravitate to, but it was definitely interesting, exciting, and cool. As a movie adaptation, however, I thought it blew chunks. I get it that moviemakers can't go through a book page by page and put that on the screen; however, so many of my bullet points above were such integral parts of the plot that they should have been put in the film. Ugh.

Anyway, the kids really enjoyed it and I guess that's all that matters. :)

Enjoy your reading (and watching!)!

Christi