We all know that over the past couple of years young adult fiction has become insanely popular due to their time on the big and small screen. Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games and J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter are just a few examples. But yet, there are still many books out there that still deserve their Hollywood fame. So what YA novels would be good for the cinema or TV?
Percy Jackson/The Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan
Yes, I know what you’re thinking, Percy Jackson has already been a film. TWO in fact, but we all know that they were absolute rubbish. Rick Riordan himself did not watch them because he knew how different they would be to his story. So why should Percy Jackson get a reboot? Well… because it is an amazing story and could be made so much better as a film. Well, maybe not for film but for TV instead. Cassandra’s Clare’s Mortal Instruments has done much better on Netflix than it did on as a film, so Percy Jackson could do the same. Being a TV show would mean more time for the story to be spread out and so much more of it could be covered. We could see important elements that the film cut such as the prophecy in the attic. Maybe the characters could actually be twelve years old like they start off as in The Lightning Thief as well. It is these little but important parts that would really do the books justice and show Rick Riordan’s mythology novels for how fantastic they really are.
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
Fangirl has been praised by teens all over the world for how accurate is portrays the joys and struggles of being obsessed with something. If you’re a fangirl (or fanboy) there is not one thing to dislike about this book, so why shouldn’t it be made into a film? It would be wonderful to see such a realistic story played out in live action. It has everything a film could possibly need; real life situations, friendship, romance, a happy ending. Having its time in the lime light would not just give Rowell’s fantastic writing more recognition, but it could also give teens the recognition that they deserve but is not understood. Adults do not always understand why we become so infatuated with certain things, so this story could be the explanation they need to accept that it is these obsessions that make us happy.
The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken
If anything, this book is made for TV. Like The Hunger Games or Divergent, The Darkest Minds is that of a dystopian future set in America. Everything is falling to crumbles because of a disease that has killed most of the country’s children, leaving the rest with dangerous powers. Here, four kids take one hell of a cross-country road trip where they go through everything that could just about go wrong. Chad Hodge, the creator of Wayward Pines, is actually set to adapt the book. We just don’t know when. The book has that road trip feeling that sets an eerie mood for the story, like that of The Walking Dead. This would come across well in live action, along with its gripping storyline and well-written characters. When reading the book it is easy to imagine how it would be played out away from the pages with its unique intake on the future. Although we may not see this adaptation for another few years, as least we will get to see one, because this book definitely deserves it.
The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson
This is not a typical YA novel; it is not set in the future or has characters with fantastical abilities that end up in a love triangle. Instead, Lisa Williamson captures the accuracy of teens struggling with identity and loneliness by creating a character who wants to be the opposite gender. She plain and simply writes the truth, without the meaningful metaphors, and she definitely has guts to write about this kind of topic for her first ever novel. The Art of Being Normal is thus, so definitely one for the cinema. Not only would it show the truth of how some teens feel but it could be a film that they look up to, one that they can align themselves with by knowing that they are not alone. The book already does this, but with its comedy and emotions, a film would take it that one step further and show the world for how inspiring it is.
The Chronicles of St. Mary’s by Jodi Taylor
Despite being self-published by Amazon, Jodi Taylor’s time travel series has become extremely popular. They are not your typical time travel novels. Instead, they focus on a historical institute that uses time travel to investigate major historical events. For years my mother and I have both agreed that they should be films, because although they are not some of the most well-written novels, the story alone is enough to make them amazing. The amount of historical events the characters visit, such as the dinosaurs and the Trojan War, would be great to see onscreen instead of just imagining them. They create interesting storylines and produce intense plot twists which are made for cinema. They definitely have a bit of everything that we would want to see in a film.
These books could just be turned into another typical adaptation, but they each have something different about them. Something that could change the way books are adapted for film or TV. Hopefully one day these fantastic novels will get their Hollywood fame, because they would certainly be popular.
