Before I forget again – Beastly http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Beastly/Alex-Flinn/e/9780060874186/?itm=1&USRI=beastly - Alex Flinn’s wonderful retelling of the Beauty and the Beast tale, will be a movie, coming out July 30th. Just came across the page I pulled out of the 4/2/10 Entertainment Weekly with a picture of Neal Patrick Harris, who will play Kyle’s blind tutor. He is wearing greenish, very cool almost Wicked looking glasses. Vanessa Hudgens plays the girl who believes in him. And, of all people - Mary-Kate Olsen plays the witch who curses Kyle. Olsen is nothing like the chubby character I imagined from the book! I watched the trailer here: http://beastly-trailer.blogspot.com/. Kyle also looks nothing like I imagined, but this does look like a movie I will enjoy. Doesn’t follow the storyline as closely as I’d like, even in the trailer, but most movies don’t.

The tattoo-like markings on Kyle's body remind me of the markings I imagined Green inflicts upon herself in Green Angel by Alice Hoffman http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Green-Angel/Alice-Hoffman/e/9780439443852/?itm=5&USRI=ash+hoffman – one of my all time favorite YA novels. I haven’t read Green Witch http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Green-Witch/Alice-Hoffman/e/9780545141956/?pwb=1& the sequel yet, but it is on my “gotta read” list. I am a big Hoffman fan and wish I had time to wallow in her books.

I am sure the green round glasses remind me of the ones worn by the residents of OZ in Wicked http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Wicked/Gregory-Maguire/e/9780061350962/?itm=6&USRI=maguire+wicked as we went to see it in Louisville Saturday afternoon. It was wonderful! Gregory Maguire is a gifted author and I've been dying to see the play. I was spellbound! But, it also brought to mind just how adult in theme and nature Maguire's books actually are. Wicked http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Wicked/Gregory-Maguire/e/9780061350962/?itm=6&USRI=maguire+wicked#TABS brings Elphaba to life as a child and a woman who is much less wicked in nature than most of the good folks of Oz. But the themes of prejudice, adultery, child abandonment, etc. are not child/tween appropriate. I also found myself at the edge of tears many times while reading Son of a Witch http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Son-of-a-Witch/Gregory-Maguire/e/9780061714733/?pwb=1&#TABS - written 10 years after Wicked and as brilliant. Is the teenage boy found beaten in a gully outside the castle Elphaba supposedly died in really her son? Liir sets out on a quest to find out who he is and where he belongs in this chaotic realm of Oz, so very different from the one I imagined while reading Baum's classic tale so many years ago. I am currently reading the 3rd title in the Wicked Years Series - A Lion Among Men http://search.barnesandnoble.com/A-Lion-Among-Men/Gregory-Maguire/e/9781616795481/?pwb=1& and it is heartbreaking so far. Abandoned at birth and used as a lab experiment, the adult lion, named Brr for his cowardly quivering, may have traveled far to find out more about Elphaba from the old seer Yackle, but he really is in search of who he is and how anyone, even a lion, could abandon a child/cub. Maguire clearly isn't writing for children and I am always amazed when I hear of tween reading these books.

Back to finding the top of my desk!