I remember my parents buying me what is now called a graphic novel because I loved the movie “The Jungle Book”. I was about six.
Ee-yikes, that thing freaked me out! It had Mowgli cutting off Akela’s tail for god’s sake and swinging around in the trees showing it off to the other wolves in his home pack, and taunting them that he was now the pack leader. I still remember it some forty years later!
Needless to say it was not the Mowgli I knew. I read the Kipling’s Jungle Book later, but it had no mention of Mowgli cutting off Akela’s tail. Did I read an abridged version? It still had the flattening of Shere Khan in the cattle stampede. Whoops, no spoiler.
Sorry.
Not just kids - I read Frazier’s The Golden Bough twice - as an ADULT - and thought it was very interesting mythology-wise, although pretty heavy going.
Imagine my shock when Camille Paglia wrote about the book in her Salon.com column, and said you have to read the entire TWELVE volume set - and not the condensed version - to really understand it! Of course I had read the “condensed” version, and I’m still not ready for all 12.
And but so I wonder how many people are going to get this (as odd as it is, I’m sure someone* will) little joke, or my (odder (yet more apt**)) little jape.
*(An overeducated tennis fan?)
**(Imitation is horribly insincere.)
(A supposedly funny imitation I’ll never attempt again, promise.)
It’s not quite the same as most of the other works being mentioned here, though. Other than the descriptions of the Oopma Loompas, the story was still the same and complete.
As a kid, I had access to both the original hardcover and a then current paperback (early 80’s) and read them both, for some reason, and quickly picked up on the changes to the OL’s. At the time I wasn’t sure if they changed from pygmies because someone complained, or if it had something to do with the movie. I hadn’t run across the concept of PC at the time, or it might’ve been more obvious.
I also read “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator”, but only had a paperback of that one, and I always wondered if that one had anything different than the original.
I was quite impressed with myself when I stayed up and read it two nights in a row, while working, and thought to myself: Man! These classics are great, even if I did read the unabridged version-all four hundred pages of it!:smack:
Oh, it’s much better. I haven’t read it in a while, but the Kipling version is awesome. Way less sanitized. But that’s the case with a lot of Disney movies. Little Mermaid, anyone?
Growng up I had an entire legion of books called “Great Illustrated Classics”. They were basically a crapload of famous books that were written for kids. I read pretty much all of em, and to this day still claim myself as having read them even though I know what I read was a watered down version.
But I get the gist enough to say I read the book and seem smart to people.
Over Christmas I read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and I kept thinking it sounded awfully familiar. Then I remembered I had read the original article he wrote about that trip in Reader’s Digest in 1997. The article contained pictures of the horrible frostbite that crippled several people. :eek: The book contained pictures of the people who had died–the pictures were of them alive. I prefer the book’s illustrations.
I just had a vision of Disney mucking up “The Steadfast Tin Soldier.” Oh, the nightmares will visit me tonight. Note to anyone from Disney who may be reading this:** DON’T YOU DARE**.
I haven’t seen it, but there’s a “Steadfast Tin Soldier” section in Fantasia 2000, and it apparently has a happy ending.
Although in fairness to Disney, that particular story has to be one of the most blatant examples of an author being determined to wrench defeat from the jaws of victory. And the original ending to “The Little Mermaid” wasn’t merely a downer, it was preachy. Children shouldn’t be naughty because they’ll slow the poor dead mermaid’s quest to get to heaven? Come on!
Well, okay, maybe that part’s a little lame. But I really like the rest. Like about how walking/becoming human is gutwrenchingly painful and how it doesn’t end happily. It’s poignant. It got to me. The movie had zero emotional effect on me.
Also, I never realized that there was more of a downer than The Little Match Girl, but One Steadfast Tin Soldier has to be it. Still, I love Andersen. Was he a sad guy?
No, I’m talking about * Little Women * (well, technically Good Wives I suppose). It’s a very brief mention of Tommy Bangs setting fire to something, somewhere during the scene out at the apple orchard. One of the other differences was that the chapter full of letters to their father was shortened considerable. Off the top of my head, I can’t recall what else was left out of the condensed version, but I remember those two things.
No, it was just a condensed or abridged or something version of Little Women AND Good Wives together in one volume. It wasn’t Little Men, and it wasn’t just Little Women. I had both a full version and the condensed version side by side and I went through them one time, looking at the differences. I do remember that there was one chapter title that was different, but can’t remember which or what. Other than that, it was all just mostly small little tidbits and extraneous details taken out here and there.
When I was in elementary school I had a copy of Little Women like that – it was the entire original novel, without Part II/Good Wives. I remember one of my classmates mentioning something to me about it being sad when Beth died, and I assumed he had either stopped reading or become confused after Beth bout with scarlet fever. I had, after all, read my copy of Little Women cover to cover many times, and knew that while Beth became very ill she got better!
In the 5th grade or so some family friend gave me a copy of Little Women that did contain Good Wives, so I finally learned what happened to everyone when they grew up. But I felt (and still feel) that this was less interesting than the story of the March girls as children. Thinking about it now, it’s kind of funny that Little Women and Good Wives were ever combined into one volume. They were written a year apart, and Alcott probably never would have written Good Wives had Little Women not been such a great and immediate success on its own. But Wikipedia tells me that from pretty early on the two were being published as Parts I and II of one book, and that’s how most people have experienced them.
I never knew that they weren’t both part of Little Women. That is, I thought Good Wives was just the name of another part. Then I found out they had been published separately.
At the time I really just thought my friend was wrong! Before I got the edition with Good Wives included then I’d heard about Beth’s death from other sources as well (I think I’d seen the Katharine Hepburn film version by then) so that cat was pretty well out of the bag.
um, no offense, but I think I’ll stick to the Disney version.