Laura - Toy Story 3, Eyes Knows and Run, Kid, Run!

Hey,
Here is my post for this week,

TOY STORY 3

The Novel ‘Toy Story 3 – The Junior Novelisation’ adapted by Jasmine Jones is the next book I analysed. This book is the written form of the movie and it follows the very familiar characters through their journey.

I chose this book because I think it would be interesting to see children read it and watch them movie, and then see what they absorb from them. The children may enjoy the movie more but understand the book better or vice versa. The novel offers more insight to what the characters are thinking and feeling through thorough descriptions and detailed expressive phrases.

The only pictures to provide images of the characters are on the front cover. To fond out more about the characters, children need to read and understand the text. This novel is written in third person point of view so it can jump between scenes with different characters and situations instead of following one single character through a journey.

EYES KNOWS

I chose the novel ‘Uncollected’ by Paul Jennings. This is a novel made up of short stories that are written to entertain. The story I focused on in this book is called ‘Eyes Knows’. It is a story about a boy named Harry who is told by his parents that they are getting a divorce. They want him to choose who he wants to stay with and he doesn’t want to choose one parent over the other. Harry finds a small robot toy with a set of red eyes and a set of green eyes that light up. Throughout the day, Harry asks the little robot questions and the robot responds to it either positively, with green eyes, or negatively, with red eyes. In the end, Harry gets into trouble and gets so frustrated that he throws the robot out the window. His parents decide to live close to each other and he spends time with both of them. Later on, the robot is found with one red eye and one green eye glowing.

‘Eyes Knows’ is written in first person point of view. This allows the reader to understand what the character is thinking and feeling. Because it is written through a character’s point of view, only language that suits the character can be used. Also, this means that the story is restricted to only that characters experiences and emotions.

Although it is a fairly short story, ‘Eyes Knows’ is still structured with an introduction, complication and resolution. The introduction is fairly short as there is only one main character. The main body, the complication, takes up most of the story and the resolution is short and simple.

RUN, KID, RUN!

‘Run, Kid, Run!’ by Andrew Daddo is set during the school holidays in the local TV station. The two main characters, Harrison and Jess, who are brother and sister, are spending the day there while their mother is working. There are no kids allowed at the station so they had to sneak in and avoid being seen by the security guards. They meet some celebrities, get chased by security guards and get lost back stage while their Mum is working. To stay away from security guards they find themselves in the prop room and they dress up in disguise. After being chased by the security guards through many rooms, they end up in the producer office. The put on a giant act, pretending that they were meant to be there and the producer liked their characters so much he wanted to make a TV show with them in it.

The scenes in this book are set very well through the tone of the characters and the descriptions of the backgrounds. Throughout the course of the story the two main characters, Harrison and Jess, meet many characters and every character is provided with a detailed description so that the reader can visualise them well. This is a long picture book wit many sentences per page. The images on every page offer only a glimpse into the story line. To understand the story the reader cannot just look at the images. ‘Run, Kid, Run!’ is a great book for children who want to escape into a world with celebrities, chases and disguises.

 That's it for me this week!

Laura