The Iron Giant by Ted Hughes
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Book Reviews of The Iron Giant
Book Review: Childhood classic.
Summary: 5 Stars
Bought the Iron Giant video, paperback, and the original version (The Iron Man) so my college age son could enjoy them again and keep them for his future family.Book Review: Very Different from the Movie
Summary: 4 Stars
I first saw "The Iron Giant" as a movie and it's a fantastic movie. When I saw a copy of the book for sale I quickly snatched it up, I thought I would read it with my daughter.
The thing that first surprised me about this book is that it is beautifully written. It's obvious from its prose that Ted Hughes is also a poet. The slightly sophisticated language might be too much for those under 7, but I found it refreshingly charming.
The second surprise was that this book had very little to do with the movie. There's an Iron Giant in the movie and book as well as a young boy...and that's about it. The theme's are the same (in that this world can be a world of peace instead of a world of violence and fear) but both approach this lesson from different directions.
In the book, the Iron Giant, tricked by the boy, falls into a trap set for him by fearful farmers. The farmers quickly dispose of the giant, but the giant returns and it's up to the boy again to figure out how best to deal with him. In the end the boy and giant become friends but there is a bigger threat on the horizon, a space dragon the size of Australia has come to earth and only the Iron Giant can save the planet.
There's a lot of deep information here for such a short children's book. The Iron Giant (like in the movie) represents misguided fear. The space dragon can mean a number of things, but I align it with this planets habit of aggression... an aggression that threatens to consume us all. This book was written 30 years ago, but it seems timelier now than it did in the 1970's.
Book Review: great bed-time story
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a great bed-time story. It is broken into 5 chapters and each chapter is short enought to read aloud in one night. The story keeps the interest of the child and is fun for the adult to read. It is two stories. The first part is the arrival, capture, and release of the Iron Giant. The second part is the Iron Giant takes on the alien. The book is good and has a pieceful message that children of all ages should enjoy. This is the only time I will ever say this, listen up! The movie is far superior to the book. This, by no means, takes away from the book. In fact being far superior to the book means that the movie is quite extrordinary. Get both and enjoy both. Discuss them with your children.
Book Review: Excitement and suspense without violence!
Summary: 4 Stars
I have read this book with my Fourth Grade classes for the last eight years. The reading, while "easy", is nonetheless rich. My students' writing is often rife with violence. It can be difficultto convince them that excitement and suspense canbe achieved without "blood and guts". After reading the Iron Giant, they are pleasantly surprised and often write "sequels" to the Iron Giant's adventures. The prose is poetic. It makes a terrific read aloud.Book Review: Quite a strange book
Summary: 3 Stars
The movie's story is quite a bit more coherent, and better-constructed, than the book's. Both are science fiction, but the book has a lot more of what might be called science fantasy or science fairy tale than the book--especially the giant bat creature who lands astride Australia and the weird international peace vibe that comes over the world at the end. (I don't mean that int'l peace is weird, but how it comes about. It is poetic--but makes sense only on a metaphorical level.) The book reads something like an elaboration of a dream, or maybe a stream of consciousness fantasy a father might spin out to his son over the course of several days.
What doesn't sit right with me, regarding the book, is the way the story completely switches gears halfway through, both in tone and plot. The book begins interestingly, somewhat like the movie, with the iron giant hunting for metal near a small town. Then, implausibly, he is captured in a very deep pit by the upset farmers of the area. From there it's still interesting, I wouldn't deny that, but it does get mighty weird, in a way that doesn't much hang well with the first part. A giant bat creature occupies the second HALF of the book, and my quite space-savvy boy and I had to put our knowledge of space on hold and imagine what the author were saying as if it were...well...a cartoon. The impossibly large creature lands astride Australia and winds up spending lots of time on the surface of the Sun, for somewhat implausible reasons. In fact, it reminded me of a cartoon bat-type creature, the devil creature from the "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence of Fantasia. OK, sure, it's a kid's book, but even kid's books have to be held to some standards of plausibility and coherence. It's not at all surprising that the movie makers left out the second half of the book entirely.
On the positive side, I must agree with a previous reviewer that this is quite a well-written book, purely in terms of style, which is both simple and poetic.
My little boy ended up liking the book, and was interested in re-reading it, so I am bumping up what would have been two stars to three on his account.
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