KidLit Forum

Mia Thermopolis (Anne Hathaway) is the average teenager - sweet, a little geeky and pretty much invisible to everyone with the exception of her mother, best friend Lilly and Lilly's older brother Michael. Making it through high school without throwing up is a challenge in itself for Mia, so it doesn't come as welcome news when her estranged grandmother shows up out of the blue and calmly informs her that she is in fact the heir to the throne of a European country called Genovia. Suddenly Mia's life is thrown into complete overload. She's being taught about scarves, waves and pears in order to become a perfect princess, she gets a makeover and a tough looking yet sweet bodyguard/limo driver called Joe. Things get out of hand when the media gets a hold of the story and suddenly Mia is thrust into the spotlight in both the newspapers and in school. On top of all that Mia has a choice to make. She must decide by Genovia's Independence Day Ball whether she longs to relinquish her claim on the throne or to become the princess and heir to the throne and father and grandmother want her to be.

A video game character, Ralph, is always in a bad mode. Problem is, nobody loves a Bad Guy. But they do love heroes... so when a modern, first-person HD shooter game arrives, Sergeant Calhoun, Ralph sees it as his ticket to heroism and happiness. He sneaks into the game with a simple plan -- win a medal -- but soon wrecks everything, and accidentally unleashes a deadly enemy that threatens every game in the arcade. Ralph's only hope? Vanellope von Schweetz, a young troublemaking "glitch" from a candy-coated cart racing game who might just be the one to teach Ralph what it means to be a Good Guy. But will he realize he is good enough to become a hero before it's "Game Over" for the entire arcade?

What it's funny about this game is that being different is sometimes the only solution...

(rats vs mice society, poor vs rich society, open minded vs narrow minded)

The tale of three unlikely heroes - a misfit mouse who prefers reading books to eating them, an unhappy rat who schemes to leave the darkness of the dungeon, and a bumbling servant girl with cauliflower ears - whose fates are intertwined with that of the castle's princess.

(gender stereotyping, identity)

Like Billy Eliot's issue, Viola wants to join the boys soccer team, but they do not allow girls. So she thinks "If you can't join them, beat them". So she does! She disguises herself as her twin brother Sebastian, and goes out for the rival school, Illyria, boys' soccer team and makes it. Unfortunately, she didn't plan falling in love with her roommate Duke. But Duke has his eyes on Olivia. What makes matters worse is that Olivia starts to fall for Sebastian because he/she has a sensitive side. If things couldn't get more problematic, the real Sebastian (who was in London working on his music) comes home early. He arrives on campus and has no clue that he was replaced by his twin sister...

teenage normalcy - whatever that is...

Like any other fresh teen, Bianca Stratford is dying to go out with Joey Donner, the babe of their school. Her sister, Katerina Stratford, would rather die than go out with a boy, because she was treated badly once by Joey and now he put his eyes on Bianca. Mr. Stratford has this rule where Bianca can date... when Kat does and he always asks Bianca to wear a pregnant costume to remember the great responsibility she will have. Bianca begs her sister to have a night of "teenage normalcy." Little does Bianca know that not only Joey is trying to set her sister up but also Cameron her cute, but also unpopular French tutor. Joey and Cameron's "set up guy", Patrick, is trying to get Kat to go out with him. Patrik, alongside with Kat are outsiders. They can't integrate and so everybody see them as freaks and unpopular. Kat sympathize with him until she finds out that their relationship was a scam. But was it really a scam after all?

(popularity vs unpopularity, identity, difference, bullies)

High school student Olive Penderghast finds herself the victim of her school's "rumor mill" when she lies to her best friend Rhiannon about losing her virginity to a fictional college freshman. Word quickly spreads of Olive's promiscuity and, much to her surprise, she welcomes the attention. When she agrees to help out a bullied gay friend by pretending to sleep with him, her image rapidly degrades to a more lascivious state and her world begins to spin out of control. Olive becomes a notorious student. Meanwhile, Olive is studying "The Scarlet Letter" in the English class and she identifies herself like Hester Prynne, the woman condemned by her Puritan neighbors in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel. As she helps more and more of her classmates and her lies continue to escalate, Olive must find a way to save herself before the school's religious fanatic Marianne gets her expelled and she loses a shot at attaining her own happiness.

Thank you very much, Diana, for your massive contribution.
I am sure this will help your colleagues get a better idea of the vibrant debates of minority and diference in YA films.

Just in order to make everything smooth, could you please:

A.- check a couple of hours later if the images you posted are still visible. As you can see, at this point, several pictures are no longer visible. This is becuase some websites do not allow cross-linking --even if you did not steal the pictures from them, but just refered back to tehm (which, by the way, could bring them more traffic, but they are too stupid to notice that). As you have seen I have already replaced several of your images with others (hoping that they will stay here). Note that IA Media seems not to allow cross-linking, so better don't link to them.
I woula also avoid linking to blogs (many people simply abandon their blogs, and then your reference will point to NOthing).

B. - please add also the title of the movie in letters, not just in the poster. Since the image might take long to load (these images are fairly big...), or might disappear for some reason, it's good to have the title in clear text.

Nim's Island

(psychosomatic disease)

Besides the main adventure revolving around the girl, Nim, there's a sub-theme centered around the female auhtor of the adventure novels (played briliantly by Jodie Foster), who suffers from a form of extreme agoraphobia. How she can get out of her studio and embark on a real adventure, and eventually get cured --this is what this film will reveal.

Off topic

This is not a movie, but a very good series, especially the first season when all of them were in high school fighting for their privileges. It’s all about class and hypocrisy of the rich people towards others around them. Dan Humphrey, a poor but very literate freshman and a true outsider, falls in love with Serena van der Woodsen and he has to join the rich class in order to stay close to her. Her best friend, Blair Waldorf, a very rich and popular girl like Serena, tries to control everybody with her devilish plans. She doesn’t like Dan at all and all the poor people in Brooklyn. Dan realizes that everybody in the rich society follow their own path, throwing everybody aside, washing their hands if something bad happens. So he creates a site called Gossip Girl where everbody seems very glad to post gossips about Serena and co. Soon he finds out that he didn’t miss anything, that rich people are more miserable than him, his sister, Jenny, and his ex-rock band singer poor father.

Samantha's life is going downhill fast. The fifteen-year-old has a crush on the most popular boy in school, and the geekiest boy in school has a crush on her. Her sister's getting married, and with all the excitement the rest of her family forgets her birthday! Add all this to a pair of horrendously embarrassing grandparents, a foreign exchange student named Long Duc Dong, and we have the makings of a hilarious journey into young womanhood.