I am a Pixar fan. The Incredibles and Monsters University rank in my top five favorite movies. I am always impressed with how clever and tight Pixar's scripts are. The video above is a tiny peek into how they get their scripts started. My friend loaned us two picture books I haven't had a chance to read yet--not having a library is no fun people. Anyway, we read The Book With No Pictures, by B.J. Novak.
My kids giggled themselves silly for hours after reading it, each one recalling their "favorite" part, which ended up being the whole book by the time they were done. BooBoo Butt was soon a fast friend for my children too. We also read Mr. President Goes to School by Rick Walton. Poor Mr. President has to deal with The National Gopher Society who is demanding that the White House make room for gophers in the garden. Then there's the sticks and stones battle going on between Bulrovia and Snortburg and the two prime ministers who want the president to fix it. And there's the tiny issue of the VP letting the boy scouts chop up the ping-pong table for fire wood. Mr. President needs to find a simpler, happier place, so naturally, he goes to school. He enjoys finger painting, recess and milk and cookies before returning to the White House and solving the sticks and stones issue with milk and cookies and a rousing round of the Hokey Pokey.
The plot is tight, the story is well-executed and enjoyable for both adult and child. And the illustrations by Brad Sneed were perfect. The facial expressions he chose for Madame Secretary tell their own story. Rick Walton also happens to be the mentor for my friend and author Erin Cabatingan whose Musk Ox books are tops at our house.
I'm looking forward to seeing more books from each of these authors and of course, I'm eagerly anticipating the The Incredibles 2, which sadly, won't be coming out until 2019. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in those writing sessions.
I've been revising my middle-grade novel. With my kids out of school, it's been tricky finding the quiet I need. On the flip side, having them around has also created otherwise missed opportunities. We rented a cartoon for a family movie night. It was cute and the kids enjoyed it. I did to, but it wasn't one I wanted to rush out and buy or even watch again. Contrast that with Pixar films, Monster's University being my favorite, and my mind began to ping-pong between the two. I started to wonder how Pixar is able to create such solid, timeless and cross-generationally appealing scripts. My husband and I also rented a movie for us. It was a low-budget film to be fair but the script was a tragic missed opportunity--too many deus ex machina moments and one-dimensional characters. I loved it though because it forced me to take a hard look at my novel and see things with a more critical eye. I also picked up a book I thought my daughter would like--Bunnicula, by James Howe. Of course I started reading it first. I'm enjoying his whit and tight sentence structure. He wraps a lot of humor and character development in tiny, tidy sentence packages. To top it off, I received my copy of One, by Kathryn Otoshi a few days ago. Every time I read it, I find something new to blow my mind. It reaches a level of picture book perfection that's almost impossible to achieve. Kathryn did work in the film industry so I wonder how much of her work with scripts, both good and not so good, informed her ability to craft such solid material. There is something to be said about learning from successes and mistakes. Needless to say, all of these events crammed in a short space of time tricked my mind over some of its dead ends. Here's hoping for more.
