Last week, StarWars.com revealed the official covers of the OT adaptations written by Alexandra Bracken, Adam Gidwitz, and Tom Angleburger. The reveal was accompanied by a sampler excerpting the three books. There was some negative play on some sites and on the TFN Literature forum, partly because these are young reader adaptations instead of full novelizations and partly because of the stylistic choices the authors made in their adaptations. I made a thread at TFN Lit advising folks to actually read the sampler before rushing to judgment based on some out of context quotes and/or assumptions that young reader books wouldn’t be any good. The three OT adaptations are very different because the authors were presumably given the liberty to adapt the story for young readers in the way they saw fit. I may write about the ESB and ROTJ adaptations at a future date, but today I’m going to write about Bracken’s ANH adaptation because I think it’s the most promising in the set and its three chapters in the sampler illustrate why folks shouldn’t dismiss a book just because it’s for young readers.
I never read much YR Lit (Percy Jackson/Olympus books excepted, because hey, it’s me) but Star Wars YR is on fire right now. I’ve already delivered high praise for Jason Fry’s two Servants of the Empire books, need to track down Michael Kogge’s well-regarded books, and have high hopes for genre experimentation with the upcoming Lost Stars by Claudia Gray. Alexandra Bracken’s The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy is written for the same age range (8-12) as Fry and Kogge’s books and judging from the sampler, it looks like it’ll be just as good as those.
As indicated by its title, The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy is about the Big Three. Bracken chose to tell the story of the original Star Wars movie through the point of view of each character in turn, and Leia features in the opening section of the book (and consequently, the three sample chapters). At risk of gushing, I have to say that it’s probably already my favorite Leia portrayal in a Star Wars book. The fact that this book is for young readers is of no moment – the characterization is superb, the writing is impressive, and the storytelling is imaginative. Bracken isn’t merely retelling a story we already told, she is genuinely expanding it with material sourced from the radio drama or the old EU, but also with entirely new scenes. Readers who skip this book because it’s for young readers are going to miss a great opportunity to understand more about the film.
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