Customer Reviews

The Iron Giant

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Director Brad Bird's take on Ted Hughes' memorable 1968 tale, The Iron Giant, differs substantially from the story. So much so, that the book and the film may not have the same audience. Then again, those taken with the movie will likely want to explore the brief (80 page) book. This recent paperback edition features a beautiful cover drawn from the Warner Bros. movie, although the story is Hughes' original. Priced far below the lavish library volumes, this edition may be the best of both worlds, providing a look at the film's inspiration for the Iron Giant's many curious fans.

I think this is a really good book, so I think you should read it.

It was very funny sometimes, like when the seagulls found the giant in tiny pieces, and he came up with a funny way to find all his parts!

It was very exciting. The Iron Giant has to go into fire against a space monster that is bothering the world.

This book teaches about living in peace and not having so many wars. I am 71/2 years old, and it was not too hard for me to read by myself.

I have read this book with my Fourth Grade classes for the last eight years. The reading, while "easy", is nonetheless rich. My students' writing is often rife with violence. It can be difficultto convince them that excitement and suspense canbe achieved without "blood and guts". After reading the Iron Giant, they are pleasantly surprised and often write "sequels" to the Iron Giant's adventures. The prose is poetic. It makes a terrific read aloud.

I first read The Iron Giant when I was in second grade, back in '75, and it was the first thing that I read that made a real impression on me. I think it's great that this book will be available to a whole new generation of children to enjoy, as I want to share it with my own children.

A metaphor can be a very dangerous tool to wield; quite often while you are trying to reference one particular aspect of a thing, myriad other associations and relations spring to peoples' minds and they may well be quite different from those correspondences you intended to summon. Such is definitely the case with The Iron Giant by Ted Hughes--once England's poet laureate, now best remembered, albeit unfairly, by angry feminists as the husband who drove Sylvia Plath to her grave. Hughes tells the amiable story of a huge metal robot who crashes to Earth and after putting himself back together begins to sate his enormous appetite for metal by devouring cars and tractors and the like. Infuriated local farmers trap him, despite the efforts of one friendly boy named Hogarth. But the Iron Giant turns out to be quite useful when an enormous space-bat-angel-dragon attacks Earth and demands a tribute of animate matter to consume. The Iron Giant agrees to battle the monster, vanquishes him and determines that the creature is actually peaceful but was attracted to Earth by man's violence. The space-bat-angel-dragon agrees to return to space, where his "music of the spheres" has such a calming effect that Earth becomes a peaceful place.

Now the intent of Hughes's original story, as well as that of the very good recent movie which is loosely based on it, is to show the futility of war, violence, etc. Hughes book was written at the height of the Cold War and the space-bat-angel-dragon can be understood to be the Left's idealized version of the Soviet Union--a threat only because of our own attitudes and actions. The Soviet Union having been disposed of in subsequent years, the movie makes a more generalized anti-gun, anti-military, pro-nonconformity statement. But the truly delicious irony in both cases is that the most obvious subtext of the story is at war with the intended central message. Because, at the end of the day, the Iron Giant is nothing less than Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative come to life and saving the world. The author's pacifist message and the filmmaker's antiestablishment message are overwhelmed by the powerful metaphorical symbol of a gigantic defensive weapon being the only thing standing between mankind and certain destruction. How delightful the irony that book and movie basically end up being pleas for the biggest boondoggle in the history of the military-industrial complex.

I liked both book and movie very much. The film in particular may be the best non-Disney animated feature film ever made. Obviously the symbolism of the Iron Giant has escaped the control of the storytellers; but the metaphorical ironies merely add an additional layer of enjoyment.

GRADE:

Book: B+

Film: A-

As a third grade teacher, I always read this book aloud to my students in between my machines and space units (It fits both)! The kids love this book. It is not too scary for third graders, but just thrilling enough to leave them begging for you to keep reading. Wonderful read-aloud!

I first saw "The Iron Giant" as a movie and it's a fantastic movie. When I saw a copy of the book for sale I quickly snatched it up, I thought I would read it with my daughter.

The thing that first surprised me about this book is that it is beautifully written. It's obvious from its prose that Ted Hughes is also a poet. The slightly sophisticated language might be too much for those under 7, but I found it refreshingly charming.

The second surprise was that this book had very little to do with the movie. There's an Iron Giant in the movie and book as well as a young boy...and that's about it. The theme's are the same (in that this world can be a world of peace instead of a world of violence and fear) but both approach this lesson from different directions.

In the book, the Iron Giant, tricked by the boy, falls into a trap set for him by fearful farmers. The farmers quickly dispose of the giant, but the giant returns and it's up to the boy again to figure out how best to deal with him. In the end the boy and giant become friends but there is a bigger threat on the horizon, a space dragon the size of Australia has come to earth and only the Iron Giant can save the planet.

There's a lot of deep information here for such a short children's book. The Iron Giant (like in the movie) represents misguided fear. The space dragon can mean a number of things, but I align it with this planets habit of aggression... an aggression that threatens to consume us all. This book was written 30 years ago, but it seems timelier now than it did in the 1970's.

If you are thinking about buying this book because you and your kids love the Brad Bird/Warner Bros. film of the same name, don't. Yes, this is the book that they based the movie on, but other than having a large metal man and a boy named Hogarth, there aren't a lot of similarities. Both the Giant and Hogarth are very hard to empathize with or relate to. (Spoiler alert!)In the book, the Iron Giant hardly notices humans. Hogarth betrays the Giant by louring him into a trap so that he can be buried alive. It's OK, though, because the Giant frees himself to save the people of Earth from an alien space monster, after he has been sufficiently bribed, of course. I'm not sure what lesson this story is supposed to teach children or what impressions they are supposed to come away with. I actually felt sorry for the space monster.

If you have not seen the film, but liked Pete Townsend's musical of the story, then you just might enjoy the book. The musical is very similar to the book, but fills in some of the holes in the story. What you will get out of the book is Ted Hughes narrative style, which is amusing to read. This book is also great as a comparison piece for studying script writing adaptations.

If you are just picking up the book to read to your kids at bedtime, your children will have some hard questions for you by the end of it. Be sure to read this book with your own child in mind before you share it with them. My daughter found the story just a little creepy, and it sparked some interesting discussions on the morality of slavery and how to deal with peer pressure. Ted Hughes said he wrote the book for his children to cheer them and help them deal with the death of their mother. It might have worked as a distraction, but I don't find it very cheerful, other than the incredibly forced "happy ending."

This is a great bed-time story. It is broken into 5 chapters and each chapter is short enought to read aloud in one night. The story keeps the interest of the child and is fun for the adult to read. It is two stories. The first part is the arrival, capture, and release of the Iron Giant. The second part is the Iron Giant takes on the alien. The book is good and has a pieceful message that children of all ages should enjoy.

This is the only time I will ever say this, listen up! The movie is far superior to the book. This, by no means, takes away from the book. In fact being far superior to the book means that the movie is quite extrordinary. Get both and enjoy both. Discuss them with your children.

The iron man stole iron, even garbage cans and cars and tractors and homes and then goes on to iron robots and junk. The END