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“Startlingly green eyes.”

I just realized that’s the usual cliche for love interests. I would bet that if I searched through my full YA bookshelf I’d find a dozen instances.

I thought there was a law or something that girls with red hair had to wear green clothes most of the time. And if clothes, why not eyes? “Startlingly green eyes” has feline connotations, at least in my mind.

Lists can be an endearing device — think of “High Fidelity,” (not a kids’ book, I know) which begins with the narrator’s top five memorable break-ups. But Facebook is making it get old fast.

And how could Emily have left “Wizard of Oz” off her list of good movies from kids’ books? As for Princess Bride, I don’t know but I suspect that Goldman was thinking movie when he wrote the novel, even though the film wasn’t made till more than a decade later. Goldman started out to be a novelist, but his stuff was second rate at best and never went anywhere. But he tried screen writing and turned out to be very good at it. So my guess is that at some point, he started thinking of novels in cinematic terms.

Hi. Someone let me know that you’d posted about this on your site, so I dropped by. Love your post! The MG/YA writer, Alan Gratz has been complaining about green eyes for forever too. I met him years ago, before my article, and he complained about it then. I’m not sure why it never ended up on the list, because I totally agree. I just did an article about cliche characters for SCBWI’s bulletin (last month, I think), which I’ll be posting soon on my site. Maybe my next piece will have to be about green eyes! Haha. Oh, wait. You just covered it.

As for lists, I love them too! They just show up a lot, so they kind of had to go on the list. I wasn’t really intending to tell people not to use ANY of those things, just pointing out that if you think they’re original ideas then you’re probably not reading enough!

Loved your post. I’ll stop by again.

Thanks, Joelle! Yeah, I have nothing against redheaded protagonists and green-eyed boyfriends, but you do notice it when it comes up over, and over, and over. (Well, I guess I don’t have to tell you that!)

I think you got the crux of it with “Guys with extraordinarily long eyelashes,” and me when I thought of how often it’s “startlingly green eyes.” Of course a lot of love interest characters will have long eyelashes; it’s an attractive trait. But when you see these same phrases over and over, it feels less like the author has imagined a specific person in their head that they’re trying to help you see too, and more like they’re pressing the buttons that are supposed to produce an effect of “Attractive!”

“Let’s see now, we’ve got the startlingly green eyes, which she notices but is too shy to say anything about, so she hides behind her red hair, smattering of freckles, and tendency to blush…”

It’s the problem with any cliche: it’s trying to produce an impression by bypassing the stage that involves actually imagining something. So, it’s weak writing.

Thanks for your list; it’s really great.

Jay: Good point about Goldman writing the book as setup for a movie. That seems highly plausible. It’s stylized in all the right ways to become a film. (Although, the device he uses where he pretends he’s drawing from a bizarre academic tome — the one I embarassingly fell for — would never have worked in movie form.)

THE PRINCESS BRIDE and THE WIZARD OF OZ both come from books that are clearly for children, but are movies that are not so clearly so. Is that just because they’re so campy… or is it not so much intrinsic to the movies, as that the campiness fits in perfectly with the strong tendency of my generation (and those about 10 years older than me) toward nostalgia?

Jay: Such a good call on THE WIZARD OF OZ - I don’t know how I forgot it.
Elizabeth: I actually disagree, I think of THE WIZARD OF OZ movie as squarely for kids, which is not to say adults don’t also love it, partly because of nostalgia, and partly because its just a damn good movie, but I do think of it as primarly a kids movie. Whereas I do think of THE PRINCESS BRIDE as being a bit more of an all-ages movie.

Actually, now that I’m thinking about it more I might concede this point. Maybe the difference is that the humor in THE PRINCESS BRIDE swings a bit more to the ironic side (I’m thinking, for example, of the ROUSes). THE WIZARD OF OZ is many things, but it is not subtle.

I have hazel eyes, green flecked with brown, but they appear golden brown unless you really look closely. I’ve always been fascinated by green eyes and startling green eyes are quite rare. It sets up how special the character is, and aren’t there a lot of special characters in literature? Violet eyes are pretty common in romance novels I hear.

Did you get my e-mail by the way? Emily can answer too of course!!

Ooh, I just did now! (Emily usually checks the Underage Reading account.) Thanks so much!

I liked Fight Club the movie better, but I also saw it first. Other than that, I’m wary. And I really don’t like the look of the WTWTA trailer, I don’t! I just want it to be a book. I don’t want to know about Max’s mom’s divorce/affair–I don’t want there to be extraneous angst. I just want him to be a little boy who’s got a bit of the beast in him, like all little boys.

I’m sure I could come up with some kids’ books examples if I thought really, really hard, but only the travesties are coming to mind. But I’d say Rosemary’s Baby, almost anything by Stephen King, and… let’s see… Meet Me In St. Louis.

While in no way as awesome as the books, I really enjoy and look forward to the Harry Potter movies. The biggest downside to the movies is the inevitable loss of information, but it would admittedly be impossible to take everything from a 600+ page book and make a 2+ hour movie. However, I think the main ideas persist and there is very little new story line as there is in something like WTWTA.

New story line doesn’t bother me. I think this is because I tend to think of books and movies as such utterly different media that I never expect faithfulness. I go to a movie based on a book I love hoping it will capture the same feelings for me, but I kind of think of it as a different story.

It’s a bit like bands who have totally different acoustic or live versions of their songs, and both are good. It’s just a different experience.

I must say, though, that as a compulsive mental cataloguer (as I have posted about a time or two before), it took me a while to reach this place of Zen. Part of my early adolescence was spent in angst along the lines of, “The acoustic version of Born in the USA is so good!” “But it’s so different from the original!” “That’s the point and it’s awesome!” “But the original is so good!” Which one is better???

(A lot of the arguments in my head are very heated. Only violent in exceptional circumstances.)

And speaking of different stories in different media, my favorite TV blog recently asked an interesting question about the difference between successful movie heroes and successful video game heroes.

Olivia: its an interesting point about the Harry Potter movies, because I look forward to them, and I watch them over and over, but every time I’m upset at the changes. Its less the cutting of plot elements, because obviously they have to do it, and often I think they make the right choices on what to cut and what to keep. Its the character changes - Dumbledore is totally wrong, IMO, and that’s so crucial, the Weasly twins are also totally off, and the movies really shortchange developing the James, Lupin, Sirius, Peter friendship back when they were at school.
In general, though, you’re right there’s a difference in cutting down & re-arranging, vs. adding in whole new stories, which is why I think picture book adaptations are specifically problematic.

I agree about the twins. One of my all-time favorite moments is when the twins quit Hogwarts (and all the antics leading up to that moment as well). It’s just not well done in the movie. The movies also leave out the bad sides to the good characters, or treats those bad sides as funny. One of the best aspects of the characters in HP is that they aren’t all good. Harry’s father really was a jerk. Harry himself starts to act that way. In the previews for the new movie, Hermione smacks him and it’s supposed to be a cute/funny scene. That scene may be, but the underlying emotion isn’t fleshed out correctly. (Although I haven’t seen the whole movie obviously, so maybe they do get more into that, but it hasn’t been shown very well so far
.)
That said, I am completely eager to see the next movie and then own it on dvd and watch it endlessly.

I enjoyed the film version of Bridge to Terabithia. Also, the BBC’s miniseries of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (with Colin Firth) was excellent!

I never saw the Bridge to Terabithia film, because I didn’t really like the book. But maybe in that case I’d feel better about the film..ok, adding to netflix queue.

I agree about the Bridge to Terabithia film - I was skeptical after I saw previews, but it was completely absorbing AND had me sobbing. So something worked.

I love movie version of Anne of Green Gables (and Anne of Avonlea, even though it committed what ought to be an unforgivable sin - combining plots and characters from several books). It gets the spirit right, even when it changes the details.