Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Olive, the Other Reindeer by J. Otto Seibold


Rating: ★ 1/2

The television special ruined this book. I remember as a kid I saw countless times every year the wonderful Olive, the Other Reindeer that had Drew Barrymore and since I never read books as a child I didn't know this tv special was adapted from a book. I have to admit while the animation for the special may look weird, the plot was 100 times better than this book.

In the animated movie we get to see some action as to how Olive got to meet Santa and other evil characters that try to ruin Christmas and Olive's life. In this book there is actually zero drama. In the book, Olive hears the song Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer but when they get to the part of "All of the other Reindeer", Olive hears Olive the other Reindeer. They play it so many times that Olive figures she must be a reindeer and not a dog and heads over to help Santa Claus.

She arrives and Santa is about to take off and just for the hell of it he includes Olive with the other reindeers and fly off as Santa is performing his yearly duty. If I haven't seen the television special that I actually like and adore, this book would have been cute and sweet but I felt that it essentially lacked drama and details and doesn't really attract the reader into the story.

Probably they had that issue in the book and figured if they made an animated feature out of it they could go into more details and pretty much make an entirely different story from the children's book. If you or your child falls into the same predicament as me then please do not read this book at all cost. For reading my review I feel like the only way to make justified I have included the television link down below and I suggest watching it if you want a quick and simple christmas movie with talking animals.

Olive, The Other Reindeer (1999)
 

No comments:

Post a Comment