Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Kathryn Lasky's "The Rise of a Legend"

Kathryn Lasky is the Newbery Honor-winning author of over one hundred books for children and young adults.

Here she shares some ideas about an adaptation of her new book, Guardians of Ga'Hoole: The Rise of a Legend:
Well I am one of the lucky authors who did get to see her books turned into a movie. My first three books in the Guardians of Ga’Hoole series were made into the Warner Brothers 3D animation film Legend of the Guardians. And although the story was changed quite a bit I loved the acting and the gorgeous animation. Now my first new owl book in five years, The Rise of A Legend, has just been released. It focuses on Ezlyryb, the sage of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, and tells about his life as a young commander and I really have some ideas in my head about who should play what parts. Geoffrey Rush played Ezylryb in the last movie. So I vote for him again but Ezylryb was old then so we need a great actor to play him as a youngster in the first half of the book. My choice would be Daniel Radcliffe. For Ezylryb’s father, Rask, I would choose Sam Neill who played the villain in the movie. Now he can be a good guy. His mate should be Maggie Smith. The evil owl Bylyric should be played by Jack Nicholson. He’ll be perfect. Ezylryb’s best friend should be Brenton Thwaites who is playing the role of Jonas in Lois Lowry’s classic The Giver, which is about to start filming. Emma Watson would make a great Lil, Ezylryb’s love interest, and Carey Mulligan would make a terrific young Strix Struma.

Writing stories is all about finding voices and faces. So I do think about movie stars often. Of course when you are writing about owls it is more voices than faces as I don’t know of any living owls who are actors. I have to admit a lot of these voices for my owls have British or Aussie accents , but I heard them that way long before the film was made in Australia by the wonderful animators at Animal Logic.
Learn more about the book and author at Kathryn Lasky's website.

Writers Read: Kathryn Lasky.

--Marshal Zeringue