Customer Reviews

A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes: My Story

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Obviously, I would not have sought out this book to read if there had not been something about Annette Funicello I had already found very much appealling. And I mean beyond her obvious good-looks and incredible smile. And reading it confirms what I always believed in my heart -and what I wanted to believe- to be true about Annette: she is an absolute sincere and caring person. Okay, if not for Annette's eventual battle with MS, the book doesn't contain any real human drama beyond what most of us might say we experience in our everyday lives (and she acknowledges that!!). And her's is a wonderful life. Annette is absolutely convincing that what she sees through her eyes and the emotions she feels throughout the events of her life are absolutely sincere. Call it sugar-coating if you want. I believe she is absolutely real. Annette always looks to see the best in people. And therefore, it just is not in her heart to pass judgement on people and tear them down - even when sometimes, she gets hurt. Imagine that. And she never "sold out" on her principles for more money or selfish career advancement. In fact, she really was ready to walk away from it completely for the sake of her children and a little privacy. So if you want dirt and drama, go somewhere else. MS or no MS, this book is sweet. But that's Annette. So it should be. And we can all stand to learn something from her, in one aspect or another ...Or just enjoy her taking us on a trip back to an America, as she so describes "has sadly passed into history."

Surprisingly absorbing and lively recollections from Annette Funicello, one-time Mouseketeer and Disney darling who was the only teen-mouse to graduate to the big screen via "Babes In Toyland" and the "Beach Party" and "Merlin Jones" comedies. Annette comes clean about being the only Mouseketeer kept on contract by Walt Disney after MMC ran its course, and she contemplates why that was and how her co-stars struggled without Disney's guidance. She is very upfront, but also a little indifferent to her own good fortune, embarrassed and innately shy about a career that just fell into her lap. She says she never aspired to fame, but got it regardless. The book continues its interesting narrative even after Annette marries and retires, cleaning the house the day she heard Walt Disney passed, and eventually realizing her marriage was out of gas. Fate dealt Annette (and all her fans) a bitter hand when she was diagnosed with MS, which she still continues to fight, but her inspiring conclusion to the book gives all of us hope.

I have the audio cassette of A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes, and it is beautiful. I've listened to it several times in my car. I don't tire of it because it is a human story. Annette Funicello suceeded on her own -- her father was an auto mechanic and her mother stayed at home. This is an inspiration to children and even adults.

This book is Annette's view of life from a sweet, idyllic perspective. Everything from her past is shown as almost perfect and she seems overwhelmingly positive.

Unfortunately, that also means that she fails to be able to see life clearly and in this book is unable to analyze her life objectively.

She tells the story of a fortune teller that predicted her success--yet when you read the details the "psychic" actually predicted that her brother would become famous, not Annette. Annette says she was a brat while growing up in New York surrounded by noisy relatives and that she immediately changed personality once her family put her in the car to move to California--she can't figure out why, but it's obvious that all she wanted was some quiet and time away from the Italian relatives!

She paints her parents as perfect, though they married secretly and lived apart for five months before telling others they were wed. She says she had a "normal" upbringing--but she lived in Hollywood, won a beauty pageant at age nine, and played drums as a child, none of which were normal for a little girl in the 1950s.

Namely--she writes about her life as an almost fantasy world but fails to relate many details about her real world.

The first part of the book also has way too much about generic Disney history and not enough about Annette. Of the first 37 pages, 11 are devoted to the history of Disney animation and the history of Disneyland (most of the rest of those pages are about her family)--then she spends the next few pages reviewing what the 1950s was like, rather tedious inclusions that are obviously from the co-author and not from Annette herself. Then she devotes pages to how the show was presented on the air day-by-day, without telling any personal stories. You don't really get into anything halfway interesting until 70 pages into the book, when she starts her movie career as a teen. Some of this may be because Annette just doesn't remember much detail about her early years with the Mickey Mouse Club.

The only semi-negative thing Annette says about those early days are that people are mistaken in saying anything bad about Walt Disney or her Mouse Club co-stars. The problem is, other books have documented those problems that Annette chooses to ignore. The fact that some Club kids mysteriously disappeared as soon as they do one thing wrong is handled in just one sentence in the book.

She comes across as very naïve--Walt Disney was a businessman who made millions off of Annette, yet she barely mentions the merchandising of her image. He also pushed her above the others, yet she says in the book she can't imagine why she received more fan mail than the other kids.

She has no idea why Mickey Mouse Club was cancelled. She doesn't know why they stopped making her Oz movie after only two scenes were shot. There is so little depth to the book that you just roll your eyes, wondering why she brought up a subject that she has so little information about. And why didn't the co-author do some digging to get more details about Annette, with quotes and stories from others?

It's not until she starts to grow up that you get some interesting stories about her movies and the people she worked with. But, again, much of it is very guarded so that a positive spin is putting on pretty much everything. She also gives incomplete stories about many of the major events and people in her life--she dated Paul Anka but doesn't explain the break-up; she gets married to her agent but never mentions being interested in the guy until they are suddenly married and she doesn't give her first marriage's wedding date, though they do have a baby later that year (and she does give the date of her second marriage, which makes the first omission even more noticeable); it's never explained why Walt Disney didn't come to her wedding (where 1000 attended!) but she instead goes off on a tangent about a potential stalker at the wedding who never actually shows up; and in her last '60s Beach movie she has no scenes with Frankie Avalon--why not?

There are positives in the book--the best being that she defends 1950s television as being "realistic." The Mickey Mouse Club stories and her appearance on the Danny Thomas Show give her a chance to defend them as realistic for their times, which is something that modern TV viewers forget when looking back at '50s shows.

She also tells a few (carefully written) stories about people she dated, such as Paul Anka composing some of his biggest hits (Puppy Love) at her house (she claims "Put Your Head On My Shoulder" was written after she did just that to Anka).

Annette also claims to have an ideal marriage to her first husband--then out of nowhere tells him she wants a separation. While claiming to be anti-divorce ("I guess I'm still a bit old fashioned" she writes), she secretly files divorce papers and her school-aged kids find out about it when classmates read about it in the tabloids! While she claims to be a great mother and wife, there is enough here to show that Annette has many more problems than she is admitting to.

She even admits to some silly lies and deceptions--from breaking the rules of the Disney studio to (as a 40 year old adult) having her mom pretend she is Annette for some phone interviews! (She claims she was "too busy" to do them all, but then admits that she was on the extension listening to her mom doing the interview in her place!) Stories she thinks are endearing are actually baffling in this context.

Some will consider her fight with MS inspiring and it garners her the superlative reviews from other Amazon reviewers. But her covering it up and lying to her father and stage partner Frankie Avalon for a couple of years shows a lack of character on her part, especially when she blows up at her husband when she discovers he had told Frankie long ago to protect her. So she gets mad at them for "hiding" from her that Frankie was told--yet she spent years hiding it from him and everyone else! (She did tell her kids--but think of her kids being told to hide it from their grandpa and others.)

The book ends up being rather disappointing because she lives in a fantasy world. It's the perfect book for those who enjoy an almost TV-movie version of one's life story. But this is no tell-all and reveals little more than a surface understanding of a great woman's career and life.

I bought this book for 50 cents at St Paul's Church tag sale in West Haven, CT, and I just finished reading it. I absolutely loved it. It told everything about Annette, Disney, the Mousekeeters, and her family. You will enjoy this book. It also tells about her battle with MS, and her break into show business as well as how her grandparents came here from Italy, and how her parents met. A well enjoyed autobiography. If you love Annette, you will love this book. I highly recommend it.

I haven't finished this book yet but what I have read takes me back to simpler times and reminded me why I was always an Annette fan. Those were precious times never to return again. If you are a baby boomer and loved watching any Disney TV from that era, you would truly enjoy this book. Thank you, Annette for being such a special person in my life.

This book was great! I wish it told in more detail of her struggles with MS. Easy read.

The seller, Sandi Stratton, is outstanding. Item arrived in perfect condition, even earlier than promised.

Annette Funicello was America's sweetheart as a 12-year old and now, fifty years later, she's still loved and admired by her many fans. This autobiography details her discovery by Walt Disney and early years on the Mickey Mouse Club, her beach movies, married life, and, most recently, her battle with multiple sclerosis.

It's a cheerful, modest, and inspiring story about a lady who gave up show biz for motherhood and never regretted her choice. There are lots of stories about the actors and singers she worked with over the years, chief among them her friend and co-star, Frankie Avalon.

Even though her disease had already become debilitating when this was written in 1994, she maintains an overwhelmingly positive outlook and writes, "Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful." Included are many professional and personal photos which brought back happy memories for me of my favorite Mouseketeer.

A must for Annette Funicello fans. Tells of her days with Disney and the beginning of her career. I highly recommend this book as I enjoyed it very much. I also recommend if you can find the dvd of the television move A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes,if you can find it. I enjoyed that also.