Nim's Island!!!!

Nim's Island used to be my daughter's favorite book. I read it to her many times when she was a wee one. I think she read it a few times herself once she was reading. I haven't thought of it in awhile but today I got an email from Amazon saying there's a sequel coming out!

Nim at Sea is being released next month. I hope it's as fun as the first!

But then I clicked on the Amazon link for Nim's Island and was momentarily confused when I saw a different cover with the words "Now a major motion picture". Whhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?

So we watched the trailer for the movie coming out this April. Ok. I like Jodie Foster in the role of Alex, the reclusive adventure writer. I'm not sure about the idea of her talking to figments of her imagination but I can work with that. I really hate that they took dark haired Nim (dark haired in the original cover art) and made her blond. If the character is supposed to be blond that's fine, but I have a problem when it's changed just because Hollywood thinks blond is more attractive. (Though at least they made Nim a dark blond unlike Mrs. Coulter from The Golden Compass who was described over and over in the books as having black/dark hair and for no apparent reason was turned into a very bright, washed out looking blond for the movie).

But then we keep watching and the bad guys are no longer the evil tourist company who killed her mom but . . . pirates. In old fashioned pirate outfits and everything (maybe it will still end up being the tourist company putting on a show or something?). We watched scenes of Nim and Alex physically fighting off pirates and . . . someone in Arabian garb? Not sure, the action was too fast to really tell.

By the end of the clip I turned and looked at my daughter who had the most disgusted look on her face I almost laughed. She then said "I'll stick to the book" and marched off to her room to find it.

Poor kid. Yeah, a lot of the time the book is better than the movie. And sometimes the movie is better. And sometimes they are just different. I think we'll probably see this eventually so we'll be able to say then, but right now it looks like such a different story it might be better if we just forget it's supposed to be the same one.