Kat’s Film and Book Reviews

King of Shadows

By Susan Cooper

Aladdin Press, 1999

Image courtesy of FantasticFiction.com

Nat Fields is a boy searching for his place in the world. After the painful deaths of his parents, which he deals with by denying and suppressing his grief, Nat finds that he has a talent for acting, and is accepted into an elite theater group, The American Company of Boys. He is under the direction of the enigmatic director, “Arby,” whose odd name will have significance near the end of the book. Arby has taken the boys to perform in London at the newly rebuilt Globe Theater.

Due to some unexplained time-travel, which we begin to understand is more common in the world than we might have thought, Nat Fields switches places with another Nat Fields in 1599. The Elizabethan Nat is one of the St. Paul’s Boys, players who serve the choir of St. Paul‘s Cathedral. He has been lent to Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the company of William Shakespeare himself, to substitute in the role of Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His disorientation at being found in a time four hundred years before he was born is mercifully short-lived, perhaps unrealistically so…but then, Nat is a boy who is used to being alone and dealing with whatever comes his way. So much has happened to him that he has no control over; perhaps waking up in another century is just one more thing.

Nat performs beautifully as Puck opposite Shakespeare’s Oberon, and the theatrical antics of the whole company are interesting and entertaining. In the course of the play, Nat and Shakespeare form a bond; the one grieving a dead father, and the other a dead son, they become fast and affectionate friends. For the first time since his parents’ deaths, Nat feels he has found his true place in the world.

Of course, Nat must return to his own time in the end. The lessons learned are about finding one’s place, making the most of what one is given, and learning to grieve without judgment or resentment. Nat has some very realistic trouble adjusting to all of the things that happen to him, both in the course of the unfolding story and in the backstory. Cooper offers us his tender feelings with compassion and without sentimentality; children are not idealized, but are treated with respect. Nat is a troubled hero with whom the reader empathizes.

The only bits that might be confusing concern the technical jargon of theater, especially where it applies to the original Globe. Young readers who aren’t familiar with names such as Burbage, Marlowe, Essex and Cecil might find themselves as lost in history as Nat initially was. Nonetheless, the life of the theater is described in such a lively way that I wouldn’t be surprised if readers’ minds are opened to learning more. Nat’s healing and coming into his own are reasons enough to read Cooper’s delightful book. If her book encourages anyone to learn more about Shakespeare or the theater, even better.

Meet the Robinsons

2007

Rated G

Directed by Stephen Anderson

I was first introduced to this film through the Rob Thomas song, “Little Wonders,” which was on the soundtrack.  The song is a poignant tribute to the small things that make up a good life, the “little wonders” that take place in the “small hours.”  The things that make up a family and the memories that form it. 

This movie is about family, but it’s also about taking responsibility for your life.  The two themes are connected; it’s only when you are true to your gifts and take responsibility for your failures that you even become capable of cherishing those little wonders and small hours. 

The film begins with a flashback 12 years, to when a furtive, cloaked woman leaves a baby on the doorstep of an orphanage.  Twelve years later, that baby, named Lewis, is on his 124^th adoption interview, but none of his prospective parents have understood his passion for science and inventing.  He complains about his apparent unwantedness—even his mother didn’t want him—to the orphanage director, who gently reminds him that perhaps his mother couldn’t take care of him, not that she didn’t want him.

Fueled by that thought, he attempts to invent a brain-scanner, so that he can scan his own infant memories and get the information he needs to find his mother.  This desire motivates him throughout the film, as he learns about the bonds of love that make a family.

He gets a visitor from a young man from the future, who claims to be a time cop, but is in fact his future son, Wilbur.  The rest of the film has Lewis and Wilbur trying to repair a mistake that Wilbur made, while avoiding a cartoonish enemy, the man in the bowler hat.  They zip back and forth in time machines, present to future to past to present, encountering the memorable Robinson family and a few other interesting people.

The film is an interesting and brightly colored combination of You Can’t Take It With You and Back to the Future.  Some reviewers have claimed that the back-and-forth of the time travel is hard to follow, but most kids don’t find it so.  The villain isn’t scary so much as a nuisance, but provides comedic relief in several places. 

Lewis is able to let go of his desire to illuminate the past, to find his mother; a struggle that mirrors director Stephen Anderson’s experience as an adoptee who has not felt a desire to search for his birthparents.  It’s possible that some adoptees will not relate to how easily Lewis is able to turn his back on his past in order to “keep moving forward,” as the film’s motto suggests, but as an adoptive parent, I was gratified by Lewis’ realization that in the love of his new family, he has everything he needs.

The pay-off of the film, of course, is watching young Lewis find his place in a family as unique as he is.  No matter how many times we see it, there’s something deeply satisfying about watching the misfit find where he belongs.  Since we all feel that way sometimes, it gives us hope that we will find and claim our own rightful place.