3 stars
| Overall, a good story. I have not seen the movie this book was based on, but from what I can tell, this is a simplified version of the movie. I think this book is meant to be read after having seen the movie. It goes through the origin of Super Sparkle. At the beginning is a Meet the Characters section. This goes through all of the characters. And I do mean ALL OF THE CHARACTERS, including the superheroes’ alter egos and who the bad guy is. Not entirely sure why they chose to give away who was who right in the beginning. It kind of made the rest of the book a bit pointless, which is why I’m assuming you’re supposed to have seen the movie already and know who everyone is. If you’d like to be surprised, I would suggest not reading the Meet the Characters section. It’s pretty much a built-in spoiler. The writing was decent. I know it’s hard to write text that is interesting yet simple enough for young readers, but I felt some of the language was unnecessarily vague. For example, the villain kept shooting “evil orbs” at the hero. What the heck are “evil orbs”? What an odd description. It really doesn’t tell you anything about them. We know the villain is evil, could you give up a little more detail on his powers? The whole origin thing was a bit vague as well. I am assuming it goes into a little more detail in the movie, but it’s not explained very well in the book. The pictures were good. Nice way to break up the text and add some color (although I was a little confused why everyone’s hair magically disappears when they put a helmet on- safety first and all that, but do you know how ponytails work?). Interesting story. I’m pretty sure the movie is on My List on Netflix so I will watch it at some point. Kind of nice to have a basic idea of the story from this book. A nice, quick read. Good for young readers, especially those who like Barbie and/or superheroes. Goodreads |