That just doesn't seem to be the case anymore. I still remember the first novelization I ever read was Star Wars by George Lucas. I was in third grade and it really opened my eyes to a whole new genre. My mom wasn't an avid reader when I was growing up so the only books I knew about outside of school were the books about history that my dad had on his shelves (too much like school, I wasn't interested) or John Jakes and Sidney Sheldon on my grandmothers shelves (more history and romance stuff, again, not interested).
The books they would encourage us to read in school were kind of boring too. There was either some large animal in a far away kingdom being everybody's friend or some such silly nonsense that was always pushed at you through the Scholastic label. I felt like a kid without a country. I knew that I enjoyed reading but my options were either silly kid stuff or boring adult stuff. Then I went to the school book fair.
There were all kinds of different books there. The silly kid stuff was on one side and the boring adult stuff was on the other but somewhere in between was something different. They had Peter Benchley's Jaws which always sounded cool and the movie had come out a couple of years ago but since my parents had read it, I didn't quite trust it. But then, I saw it... I knew that they made movies that were based on books but here was a book based on a movie that wasn't a coloring book. This was intriguing to my young, hungry mind especially since I had seen the movie and thought it was the coolest thing since King Kong.
As I was reading, it fascinated me that there were things being talked about that didn't happen in the movie. I'd try to tell my friends about it but they didn't care. They loved the movie but had no interest in the book. They were brainwashed by the Scholastic label. I can kind of see both sides of it since later, most of my classmates started reading Laura Ingalls Wilder and I was content to just watch the t.v. show. When the credits rolled, my interest was over. Especially because I think that either Police Woman or Barnaby Jones came on after that.
The thing that I didn't realize until after I got a little further into the genre was that it was unique that George Lucas wrote his own adaptation. 99.9% of the time there is another person who will write it and that's usually self explanatory. In fact, without Googling or using anything but my memory, I can only think of four (technically five, but we'll get into that later) books that were adapted by the writer. I'm sure there were probably others but I'm not aware of them at the moment. If you have a favorite that I've missed, please, let me know.
The first one, I've already mentioned. The other came out later that year when Steven Spielberg adapted Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This also covers the fifth one I mentioned previously when Spielberg released The Special Edition novelization. This is essentially the same book as was later proven by my seventh grade English teacher when I tried to do a book report on both books.
Sylvester Stallone wrote the novelization for Rocky II and introduced me to the first person narrative. It was amazing to have Rocky Balboa tell me a story. Especially since he'd leave in all of the conversational quirks like, "what was that called?" or "you know what I mean?" That was my first experience with the first person narrative and I've been a fan ever since.
He also wrote Rocky IV but this time in the third person. It was a little disappointing since he had provided such a life changing experience the first time around but it was still an entertaining read. I think he may have adapted an early draft of the script because I remember that the book ended with Adrian being pregnant. There was no novelization for Rocky V or Rocky Balboa so I don't know what he ever had planned for that story line although, I am starting to wonder if it won't get touched on with Apollo's wife to explain the upcoming film, Creed.
Will my book be as good as any of these? I like to think that I can at least achieve the same level of Spielberg, maybe have some scenes that color outside the lines of what you'll see on screen. Unfortunately it doesn't really lend itself to a first person narrative so I'm going with the third. I'll keep writing these journal entries and hopefully you'll keep reading them. Hopefully, you'll read the book when it comes out. Hopefully you'll see the movie and tell all your friends how much you liked it. Until next time.
