Trip to the cinema reveals Despereaux

While at the pictures today to see Wall-e (which is excellent, by the way,) I saw the trailer for the screen version of Kate Dicamillo's The Tale of Despereaux, with none other than Matthew Broderick giving voice to the mouse hero (who also voiced grown-up Simba in "The Lion King", all those years ago.) "Despereaux" is hands down my favorite Kate DiCamillo book, with any Mercy Watson title as a close second, so I'm not sure what to make of this development. The film is all CGI and looks to be joketastic, which may or may not be a good thing (think wise-ass "Shrek".) Still, the film adaptation of Because of Winn-Dixie was very good, so I will reserve judgement (for now!)

Getting back to Wall-e, go see it if you have not done so already. It's not just for kids! In fact, it was an excellent reminder that a G rating simply means that a film is suitable for a general audience, not that it is intended for the tot-lot crowd. This film was intelligent, wise, and clever beyond belief. And there was hardly any dialog! Like a fantastic wordless picture book, this film let out imagination do the talking.

Not your average crossover

I don't read much adult literature these days (although I did recently read Steve Martin's Born Standing Up and highly recommend it,) and I NEVER read Dean Koontz, so this might have completely passed me by. But in a Publisher's Weekly article about the importance of post-Christmas bookstore sales, (December 3, 2007, Vol. 254, No.48, p. 20) it was mentioned that the paperback release of Kate DiCamillio's The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane has been bumped up. Why, you ask? And what does this have to do with Dean Koontz? Well, evidently the book features heavily in Koontz's Brother Odd, and Candlewick, the publishers of "Tulane" are hoping to snag some adult readers, all on the basis of that connection. I for one can't argue with their reasoning. As a high schooler I read Candide--which was brutal, I might add-- simply because of the lyric, "It's just like a scene out of Voltaire" (That's from Duran Duran's Last Chance on the Stairway, just in case you didn't already know!) And I read Moby Dick as a preamble to Nathanial Philbrick's In The Heart of the Sea (although I probably should have read them in reverse. I recommend that one, too, BTW.)

I'd love to know if the strategy works. If it does, I wonder if it will lead to product placement among authors--prearranged mentioning to connect adult readers to kids books and vice versa. Actually, now that I think about it, I hope the strategy fails spectacularly! Far too contrived. I guess it's a shame that I found no value in my reading of Voltaire, but at least I got there on my own.