LET'S MAKE A MOVIE! - David Gordon Green & Onur Tukel

A group of energetic and ambitious kids have decide to work and play together and to make their very own movie. It's a cute picture book with fun, lively illustrations and generally moves along quite well.

But who is the book for?

It looks a lot like a kid's picture book, but the rhyme scheme is not always very smooth (the book is written in rhyme) ie: “But what will be the title/of this grand pastiche?”/The Ninjas Fight the Killer/Sharks at Bikini Beach! and “Sign me up! Here’s a check!/The movie biz sounds fun./I’m executive producer now,/so cast my wife and son.”

In addition to the struggling rhythm, some of the thoughts (such as the above "I'm executive producer now so cast my wife and son" and "The dance sequence is challenging./The instructor is so saucy./He’s got a lot of talent,/but still, he’s no Bob Fosse." and "Instead of shooting film,/digital’s the way to go./The DP has a trick or two,/low-fi, not quite Truffaut.") are definitely geared toward a more mature reading audience - one that has a little more insight to the common tropes of the film business and names that even the average, intelligent reader might not recognize if they aren't already keen on the film scene.

So, as a humor book for adults, this is cute ... not great.  As a children's book ... cute, but not great. I don't know what reading audience I would recommend this to, and that's kind of a problem. This is too reliant on insider knowledge to really appreciate it for the kids, and too immature and amateur for the adults. Do middle-schoolers and young high schoolers read picture books?

Looking for a good book? Let's Make A Movie! by David Gordon Green and Onur Tukel is a fun five minutes of your reading life, but it's not likely to be a book that you'll think about or even remember the next day. It also seems to target a pretty specific reading audience, but I'm not sure who that audience is.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.

2-1/2 stars

* * * * * *

Let's Make a Movie!

authors: David Gordon Green and Onur Tukel

artists: David Gordon Green and Onur Tukel

publisher: Pitchstone Publishing

ISBN: 1634312252

hardcover, 48 pages

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