The movie was better.

by robynrobotron

My 37th Cannonball Read book, Frozen: The Ice Box, by Courtney Carbone, was another gift my daughter got for her third birthday.  My mother got her an entire box full of Frozen merchandise, including this little box set.  It includes four books, each focused on separate characters.  If you haven’t seen Frozen, there are spoilers.  You have been warned.

• “Anna” tells us that Anna and Elsa “did not always agree”, which is somewhat misleading if you ask me.  Not speaking for a decade or so and then disagreeing on one thing doesn’t really cut it.
• “Elsa” tells the most straightfoward version of the story.  But, that might just be my impression, since I think Elsa should be considered the main protagonist.
• “Kristoff & Sven” really veers into misleading territory.  The last sentence is “an ice curse caused Anna to freeze… …but Kristoff and Sven helped save the day!”  As we all know, Kristoff and Sven certainly did help to save Anna in getting her back to Arendelle, no one is disputing that.  However, after Anna was frozen solid, they didn’t have a chance to help at that point.  This is my biggest sticking point with these books.
• “Olaf” is my favorite of the four books.  It just goes over his character arc without getting into the serious parts of the movie.  Plus, he’s just adorable.

The stories are a bit lacking in detail and character development, however, the illustrations are quite lovely.  I’m a big fan of how the CGI Disney films don’t use the imagery from the movies in their books.  I probably wouldn’t have bought these for my kid, but she definitely likes them.