Suzanne Francis (1)

The Read Along Inside Out delivers an abridged version of the story from the popular animated movie, complemented by music, dialogue, and sound effects. Revisit the story of Riley and her emotions, as all of them cope with the trauma of moving away from the home where they grew up. This is part of Disney's read along series, where the books come with an audio CD to accompany the reading, and a special tone alerts young readers when to turn the page. The dialogue is comprised of lines taken show more directly from the movie, and on the CD these lines are soundbites lifted from the film's soundtrack. Oddly, the music is not from the movie, but pulled from a generic sound track that is also used on other books in this series. I assume some issue with music rights prevents the book creators from using musical sound clips. The story is fairly true to its source, with reasonable adjustments and deletions to make the abridged version work. In the illustration department, the style is slightly altered from the movie's look, but is an adorable two-dimensional rendering that I quite like. It's nice that they didn't just pull stills from the movie. The best feature, for our family, is the novelty of listening to stories and being able to view the words and illustrations at the same time. This book is excellent for longer car trips, as I can pop the CD into the player and the girls just follow along with the book in the backseat. They really enjoy listening to stories as we drive. While the book is just an abridgment of a movie (one of our favorites), with generic writing, the package of audio and story make this book an excellent choice for our family. show less

**This book was purchased for my niece.**

This is the story of Moana, a young woman who braves the ocean beyond the reefs that surround her island home. The land is dying and the fish are gone. Legend says that if the Heart of Te Fiti is restored to its proper place, then things will return to normal. With the help of a disgraced demi-god, and a rooster who's a few eggs short of a dozen, Moana is determined to return the Heart to Te Fiti. From coconut warriors, to the great crab Tamatoa, and show more sentient lava, Moana faces many challenges on her quest, yet the greatest is getting Maui to agree to help her.

Seeing that this book is a novelisation of a movie created by Disney, it comes as no surprise that similar elements may crop up. To wit- Tala and Moana’s journey of the ship cavern reminded me that Rafiki and Simba going to the hidden pool. Gramma Tala herself is very Rafiki-like with her eccentric behaviour.

”Why are you acting weird,” asked Moana

”I'm the village crazy lady. It's my job,” replied Gramma Tala.

Gramma Tala is awesome!

I love that this book (and movie) showcased a strong and determined female lead, with no love interests at all. Strong female leads are rare in Disney, and even those that immediately come to mind (Mulan, Princess and the Frog) had some sort of romantic theme. In addition, this is a tale focusing on an oft ignored subset of humanity- Oceania. I was so happy when the movie came out because it combined all of these wonderful elements in one movie.

There were minor misspellings, leaving letters out (ex: through becomes though), and homophone errors. They were few, but I feel the distinction is important for younger readers who may pick up erroneous associations.

🎻🎻🎻🎻 Highly recommended. show less

The first thing I did when I finished watching Zootopia for the second time was buy this. The story and characters were still in my system, and I wanted more. I knew that this book was aimed at kids and would probably only be a shadow of what I really wanted. Still, it seemed to be the best I could get as far as official fiction went. What with Zootopia being a kids' movie, there are no novelizations aimed at older teens or adults.

What I tend to hope for from novelizations is at least a show more little of whatever it was that made me love the original, plus extra stuff that couldn't be in the original for whatever reason – new scenes, info about the characters' thoughts and feelings, or expanded versions of events. Slight differences and alternative versions of scenes can be fun too. More often than not, this junior novelization felt like little more than a slightly more detailed version of the script.

Characters and places were rarely described. Judy's glorious first glimpses of Zootopia, for example, became this:

"As the train came around a bend, Judy gazed out the window at the incredible sight in the distance: Zootopia. She pressed her face against the glass and watched each borough of the city pass by." (15)

That's it. Right after that, she got off the train and headed to her new apartment. I missed the movie's gorgeous visuals a lot. The book's bare bones writing also had a tendency to suck all the emotion out of some of the movie's most emotional scenes. On the plus side, I'd flipped through the novelization in the store and already had some idea of what to expect, so all of this was more a confirmation of my low expectations rather than a disappointment.

There were a few things I enjoyed noting: many of the minor characters were given names (the way one scene was written made it seem like Judy divined Finnick's name just by looking at him), some minor characters were a different species than they were in the movie, there were additional/changed jokes, and a couple scenes were noticeably different, although not in ways that affected the story at all. It was literary crumbs, but I took what I could get.

One thing that struck me was that Chief Bogo seemed even more like a character from a story for adults stuck in a story for kids. From a kid's viewpoint, the way he came down on Judy probably seemed overly harsh and unfair. As an adult, I could totally see where he was coming from.

It's tough reviewing this, since I'm very much aware that I'm not the target audience. I don't know any kids of the appropriate age that I could ask, but I could imagine younger fans of the movie enjoying it, and the familiarity of the story would probably be helpful for less confident readers. For me, this was a so-so read at best. I probably would have been better off hunting down a copy of The Art of Zootopia.

Extras:

Eight pages of stills from the movie, for a total of 16 stills. I liked them, but unfortunately they didn't include anything past the DMV scene. I assume this was in an effort to avoid spoilers, since all the pictures were in the middle of the book, but I'd have loved one or two "Judy and Nick are friends" stills.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

Not a bad book, but a best it's supplemental to the movie. Great to read to kids who love the movie! But it also didn't really add anything. And, if for some reason you read this before you saw the movie, you would definitely find it to be lacking something.
Basically, this book doesn't tell Moana's story. This book describes what happens in the movie that tells Moana's story.
And obviously there's no music in the book, and that literally cannot be helped; but there's an emptiness you feel show more when you get to moments where there are fun set piece songs and instead you get, well, nothing.
BUT- perfect if you have a kid eager to be read longer stories while one is still content with much smaller books. We read it over the course of a few weeks or so, usually one chapter/scene a day. show less