Paradise Found » Swallows and Amazons on the Big Screen?

Swallows and Amazons on the Big Screen?

January 11, 2008 at 9:16 am · Filed under kidlit, My Musings, rants

I read over at Farm School that BBC Films is acquiring options to all twelve of the Swallows and Amazons adventures. I love these books. If you haven’t read them out loud to your kids, I highly recommend them. I haven’t seen the older versions of the Swallows and Amazons movies, so I can’t speak to them. But I will say that I’m tired of people making movies or writing books “Inspired by the success of The Dangerous Book for Boys.”

The book is just not that fabulous, people. Don’t get me wrong; it’s good in the sense that apparently it has moved some kids from the couch to the out of doors. But it’s not a new concept. Kids - including mine - have been hammering and sawing and building and climbing and decoding long before they had a brick red handbook telling them how to do so. If parents want to encourage their kids to be “dangerous”, their money would be much better spent on a toolbox filled with a hammer and a screwdriver, along with a promise of some unscheduled time.

And seriously? If you’re looking for danger, you’re going to be MUCH better off with this book.

/rant (my, my, I got a little off track there, didn’t I?)

Permalink

Andrea said,

January 11, 2008 @ 12:58 pm

I was all set to be jazzed for TDBfB, then I was able to skim throguh it and realize we had a few (older) books with a lot of the same info in them. Like the Scouts handbook.

I think it’s sucessful partly because of the title and partly because there’s a segment of parents out there who hardly let their kids go out of doors unsupervised and they’ve never had a chance to see that - gosh, people DO these things!

Becky said,

January 11, 2008 @ 1:34 pm

I’ve been interested to read the more hesitant posts around the blogosphere and at hs Yahoo groups about parents’ reactions to Gever Tulley’s Five Dangerous Things, most of which my kids have been doing (and without, erm, parental supervisions, once they’ve successfully passed the initial supervisory period). Which definitely explains the appeal of The Dangerous Book.

I definitely agree with your idea of a proper set of tools — and real ones, not the kiddie toy variety. There’s nothing worse than trying to make something with tools that don’t work.