I finally managed to finish this series!  I was initially inspired to read it after I went to see the film with my two ten year old nephews this past winter.  I enjoyed it quite a bit, being a lover of kid and teen lit and general and having a soft spot for Freddie Highmore. So I ordered the series as one book back in the spring.  It’s sat on my coffee table since then, and I would pick it up every now and again and read a bit and then forget it for weeks and then pick it up again.

However I had made a promise to my nephew that he could have my spiderwick books the next time I saw him, which will be the end of July, so I had to finally buckle down and finish it (plus I have another nephew visiting me right now, and he has comendeered the computer to play Rollercoaster Tycoon, so I was left with nothing to do!)

What struck me about the books, particularly from book 3 on after the kids meet Lucinda, is the amount of differences between the books and the movie.  It doesn’t particularly bother me, mostly because it was completely necessary to fit the books into one film.  I suppose it was just that I was surprised to be surprised — I had thought after seeing the film I would know what happened in the books, but clearly, clearly not.  I am curious now how kids who read and loved the books before they saw the movie reacted to those changes.

Spiderwick was a fun read.  It wasn’t particularly sophisticated, even for a kids book (it’s no Potter, or Narnia or His Dark Materials), but it was good fun that will have you rooting for the Grace kids and wondering what became of them.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 9:20 am and is filed under Books, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.