People want to know why I complain about picture books going digital. I feared the worst and the worst has come true for one of my books. My book Pop looks great on the apple products but my book Balto looks TERRIBLE on the Nook. I mean it. Really, truly, awful. I want to take photos to show as an example and perhaps I can pull this off. I don't want to get caught taking photos of the device while at work though. I was told that there are two different ways that the book can be displayed on the color Nook and that the programing for my book was sent in in the ugly format. I wonder why there are two options to begin with?
So I will try to explain how it looks. The first option (the good option) is for the book to look like the book (and this is how Pop looks on the Apple products). The second option - and this is how my book Balto is displayed in an awful manner - is for the text to be removed from the art and for the book to be displayed like a novel. The art is cut up in pieces and displayed here and there--sometimes at the top of the page, sometimes on the next page, sometimes blown up X200 so that it looks super bad... and the font can be changed to anything. So basically the book is BUTCHERED in the most enormous way possible. You certainly cannot read it to a child in the manner in which it is displayed on the device. It's just a joke.
I'm sorry but these things have a LOOOONG way to go before they think they can sell picture books fairly. I'd want my money back! Grrrr.
You may not believe how bad this actually is so stay tuned for photos (if I can manage).
Showing posts with label picture books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label picture books. Show all posts
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
HOW KIDS' BOOKS FILMS AND BOOKS HAVE CHANGED
I remember this from childhood. They must have replayed it in the 80s. It's so odd and obviously drug inspired.
It burned into my memory I guess because it was so odd.
I remember the below movie that my dad rented for us kids when we were little. REALLY weird. A boy loses his hair after a great fright (first it turns white) and ghosts come to visit him to give him "the peanut butter solution" so that he can grow it back... only he makes the solution wrong and his hair grows like crazy. A painter guy kidnaps the boy to make paintbrushes out of his hair because his hair is magical. You can walk right into the painter's paintings. You can't make this stuff up!
This is the crazy part: It says a movie for the whole family. I DISTINCTLY remember one part of the movie. The boy's friend puts "the peanut butter" solution down his pants and grows pubic hair out his pant legs. Um.... This would never fly today!
Despite the insanity and the pubic hair incident, there's something missing in today's movies for kids and dear I say even books. They're too sterile and SAFE. You can't do this and you can't do that and a parent might complain about this or that and what you end up with and not much of anything! This is why I do nonfiction. There's something in telling a real story that is unusual that still excites me. People ask me constantly why I stopped writing fiction and this is why. Everything in fiction has been done and I'd just be repeating things. I want to do something new!
But this post isn't about me. I want to talk about kids' movies and books in general. I just think thinks have changed. They're very different. For better? For worse? What do you think?
It burned into my memory I guess because it was so odd.
I remember the below movie that my dad rented for us kids when we were little. REALLY weird. A boy loses his hair after a great fright (first it turns white) and ghosts come to visit him to give him "the peanut butter solution" so that he can grow it back... only he makes the solution wrong and his hair grows like crazy. A painter guy kidnaps the boy to make paintbrushes out of his hair because his hair is magical. You can walk right into the painter's paintings. You can't make this stuff up!
This is the crazy part: It says a movie for the whole family. I DISTINCTLY remember one part of the movie. The boy's friend puts "the peanut butter" solution down his pants and grows pubic hair out his pant legs. Um.... This would never fly today!
Despite the insanity and the pubic hair incident, there's something missing in today's movies for kids and dear I say even books. They're too sterile and SAFE. You can't do this and you can't do that and a parent might complain about this or that and what you end up with and not much of anything! This is why I do nonfiction. There's something in telling a real story that is unusual that still excites me. People ask me constantly why I stopped writing fiction and this is why. Everything in fiction has been done and I'd just be repeating things. I want to do something new!
But this post isn't about me. I want to talk about kids' movies and books in general. I just think thinks have changed. They're very different. For better? For worse? What do you think?
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