Copyright Expired
One of Abbie’s first Christmas presents was a set of ten books adapted from some of Disney’s most beloved animated films plus “Pocahontas.” These board books tiny, much smaller than the Cubs’ playoff hopes, about 2-inches square on the front and almost as deep even though each book is only ten pages long. They came in a handsome cardboard carrying case suitable for display or kicking under the crib and losing for months on end. Open the book, and every page on the left has a full-color drawing that appears to be lifted straight from the film and would be breathtakingly beautiful if it weren’t shrunk down to a 2-inch square space. Every page on the right tells the movie’s story in short, simple, plot-deficient sentences. As an example, I will copy the entire text of the “Pocahontas” book at great risk of incurring the wrath of Disney lawyers:
It doesn’t exactly ruin the movie for those that haven’t seen it. Some of the books do a better job of telling the story than “Pocahontas,” which seems more designed to sell Pocahontas, Meeko, Flit, and Grandmother Willow action figures, but none of the books accurately recreates the movie experience. That’s just as well since such a board book would have to be about 84,512,017,021 pages long, making it far too large to fit both it and Abbie in my lap simultaneously. Their current size is just big enough for Abbie to read the same thing several times in one sitting, providing a premonition of what she’ll do with the Disney movies over the course of several hours once she figures out how to operate the DVD, which I’m guessing will happen sometime around her second birthday.
These books were a big hit when she first saw them. We would read them together several times every day. Of course, when she first saw them she was still mostly a blob at the mercy of whatever I chose to read to her, so she didn’t have much say in what we read. Eventually she lost interest in those books as the pictures grew a little too familiar, the words a little too dull, and the corners a little too worn from her constant chewing.
After spending several weeks at the bottom of her book bucket, I recognized that she hadn’t looked at them recently and cycled them up to the top of the rotation. Abbie has since rediscovered these books, and spent much time going flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, turn over, and repeat. “Bambi” especially enchants her, particularly one set of pages showing an opossum family hanging upside-down accompanied by the words “The opossums like to hang upside-down.” She will pick the “Bambi” book off the floor, flip through the pages looking for the opossums, go back through the pages after she missed them the first time, struggle to separate the opossum pages since they’re glued together by some substance likely of Abbie origin that I’d rather not think about, and then grab our fingers to point out the opossums to us.
I generally oblige her by reading the words to her. When that fails to satiate her I count the opossums, one, two, three, four. When she stays transfixed on the opossums, I try describing them to her. They’re hanging upside-down, just like how Abbie likes to hang upside-down. There’s a parent opossum, and three young opossums, just like our house will be like in a few months when mommy is at work, or when daddy is out of the house “resting.” They want to be Bambi’s friends. They want to help Bambi after Bambi’s mother was, er, that’s a plot detail I want the movie to reveal to you.
“Pocahontas lives in the forest. Her friend Meeko is always hungry. Her friend Flit is very small. Percy likes to chase Meeko. Grandmother Willow takes care of them all.”
It doesn’t exactly ruin the movie for those that haven’t seen it. Some of the books do a better job of telling the story than “Pocahontas,” which seems more designed to sell Pocahontas, Meeko, Flit, and Grandmother Willow action figures, but none of the books accurately recreates the movie experience. That’s just as well since such a board book would have to be about 84,512,017,021 pages long, making it far too large to fit both it and Abbie in my lap simultaneously. Their current size is just big enough for Abbie to read the same thing several times in one sitting, providing a premonition of what she’ll do with the Disney movies over the course of several hours once she figures out how to operate the DVD, which I’m guessing will happen sometime around her second birthday.
These books were a big hit when she first saw them. We would read them together several times every day. Of course, when she first saw them she was still mostly a blob at the mercy of whatever I chose to read to her, so she didn’t have much say in what we read. Eventually she lost interest in those books as the pictures grew a little too familiar, the words a little too dull, and the corners a little too worn from her constant chewing.
After spending several weeks at the bottom of her book bucket, I recognized that she hadn’t looked at them recently and cycled them up to the top of the rotation. Abbie has since rediscovered these books, and spent much time going flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, turn over, and repeat. “Bambi” especially enchants her, particularly one set of pages showing an opossum family hanging upside-down accompanied by the words “The opossums like to hang upside-down.” She will pick the “Bambi” book off the floor, flip through the pages looking for the opossums, go back through the pages after she missed them the first time, struggle to separate the opossum pages since they’re glued together by some substance likely of Abbie origin that I’d rather not think about, and then grab our fingers to point out the opossums to us.
I generally oblige her by reading the words to her. When that fails to satiate her I count the opossums, one, two, three, four. When she stays transfixed on the opossums, I try describing them to her. They’re hanging upside-down, just like how Abbie likes to hang upside-down. There’s a parent opossum, and three young opossums, just like our house will be like in a few months when mommy is at work, or when daddy is out of the house “resting.” They want to be Bambi’s friends. They want to help Bambi after Bambi’s mother was, er, that’s a plot detail I want the movie to reveal to you.
posted by Matt at
9:49 PM
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