@moviefan
by Moviefan
On The Christmas Case With Nancy Drew: The Secret Santa (The Nancy Drew Notebook # 3)
December 5, 2023 in Blogs
I am back again with another Nancy Drew Christmas review. This is now the fourth time I’ve looked at a series featuring Little Nancy and from what I understand this series was the first time that an eight-year-old Nancy Drew had been featured in anything. However, the way the illustrator drew Nance and her friends made me suspect that these were some tall third-graders.
Something I found somewhat annoying though I do get it is that in this series there is a mean girl named Brenda I get it for this series as this was a common trend and she does serve as a red herring character for the mystery that little Nance is trying to solve but at points, she felt like a non-entity to the story.
by Moviefan
Christmas with Barbie: Barbie in a Christmas Carol (Junior Novelization)
December 4, 2023 in Blogs
Everyone and I mean everyone has done a take on A Christmas Carol. It’s perhaps the most adapted Christmas story and why not, it’s an easy setup. Take a character that is popular and plop them in the Scrooge role. And that is kinda what we get with the Barbie take. You see until some of the more recent Barbie movies, Barbie was not playing herself but a stand-in for a character in a story and sometimes that’d be a story she was telling one of her younger sisters such as the case with the Barbie Christmas Carol as this is a story she told her then youngest sister, Kelly.
Note, even though this is a novelization of a Barbie movie, I have not yet watched it and this book was my introduction to Barbie’s take on A Christmas Carol and it was fine. It follows the formula that one would expect while having a Barbie flair. Also, I must point out that this ad at the end of the book is a lie.
by Moviefan
On The Wintry Case with Nancy Drew: Case of the Sneaky Snowman (Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew # 5)
December 1, 2023 in Blogs
Ah the holidays are upon us again and this is my favorite time of year. And much like Halloween I’ll be looking at holiday books for things I’m a fan of but I won’t be doing these daily as that took a lot out of me last time. Anyway we are once again starting with eight year old Nancy Drew though I must put an asterisk next to this being a holiday review as the holidays are never mentioned but it is set during winter break for the girls.
Cover
The cover is cute but seeing as I listened to the audiobook I’m a bit miffed that company RecordBooks decided to cut off part of the cover with those red banners. Here’s what the cover should look like.
Those banners cover a lot of the cover that’s pretty cute when you can see all the details. You’ve got the Clue Crew working on their snowman Sherlock with the broccoli nose and blue scarf. And there’s something in the background that is kinda hard to make out.
Narrator
Cassandra Morris
I apologize for not having a picture of the narrator but when I looked her up, I couldn’t verify if it was her or not. Still, I must say Morris did a good job capturing that little kid voice for Nance and her friends at this  point in their young lives. Side note, I was surprised to find out Ned exists and is a fourth grader. I guess that makes sense as he’s always been older than Nancy but it’s so weird to see this book refer to him as Nancy’s good friend when I’ve always known him as her boyfriend.
The Plot
This is my second outing with the Clue Crew and I’ve noticed at times the story and mystery can feel a bit disconnected and that was the case here with this story. While the story starts with the girls building the snowman Sherlock that we see on the cover, it really takes off when a classmate of the girls named Deidra says that she is a fortune teller called Madame Choclotta that can predict he future by reading marshmallows in people’s hot chocolate. Pretty silly but on par with what you’d expect from an eight-year-old fortune teller. And the fortunes are pretty silly like the Drews will have pizza for dinner and a pizza is delivered to their house that night or a girl will get a puppy. This is when the girls are clued in as they see a fellow classmate trying to steal Nance’s puppy, Chip. Turns out a friend of the fortune teller was trying to make the fortunes come true as he didn’t want her to be disappointed.
This is also where the snowman named Sherlock comes into play as he goes missing as predicted by the fortune teller. As he dsiappears the day afer they build him and this also ties into another fortune that Bess would fall and hurt herself before a big ice skating show. That does happen and FYI I just love how girly Bess is in these books.  This leads the girls to do some research and contact foruth-grader Ned to ask if they know about an older kid that pulls pranks. They find him and he admits that he pulled some of the pranks but he stopped messign with snowmen in the second grade.  Nance hears a report about the abominable snowman and wonders if that has anything to do with this.
Well no but that’d be fun and this is where the mysteries sart to come together as the snowman is tied into Bess’s ice skating show. I don’t want to say too much else but the reveal makes sense and it does have a cute finish for the book.
My Final Thoughts
This was a cute book and a fun start to the winter season. While it may not be Christmassy, I thought it was cute. We aren’t done with little Nancy just yet as I’ll be looking at an actual Christmas book featuring little Nancy from the frist series t0 de-age her as I look at book from The Nancy Drew Notebooks.
by Moviefan
On The Halloween Case with Nancy Drew: Nancy Drew: The Curse
October 30, 2023 in Blogs
Today I have reached the final Nancy Drew review for the Halloween season and it’s a bit weird. This book is a prequel set before the events of the Nancy Drew TV show that aired on The CW for four seasons. Now usually, a book set before the events of this show would be perfect as The CW show did dabble in the supernatural and the occult yet this book seems to read as a regular Nancy Drew book that is barely attached to the show.
by Moviefan
Halloween with Barbie: Congrats for Christie (Barbie Fashion # 24)
October 28, 2023 in Blogs
Today I close out my look at Barbie Halloween comics with Barbie Fashion # 24 and well today’s comic features the lengthiest story but the least happens in it and it is also the least Haloweeny even though it is set on the holiday. Quite a shame really, I’m not saying that this comic is bad as it’s fine but setting it on Halloween serves no purpose for the story. You could remove Halloween from the story and it’d be exactly the same.
by Moviefan
A Look at Disney’s Halloween Library: The Haunted Mansion: Storm & Shade
October 27, 2023 in A Look at Disney, Blogs
We close out our look at Disney books perfect for this time of year with a YA adaption of The Haunted Mansion. To be fair, calling this an adaption of the Mansion is rather generous. Something I’ve noticed throughout the years looking at adaptions of THe Haunted Mansion is that these adaptions don’t always seem to know how to balance the original characters and the large cast of the Mansion. The best to do this so far has been Muppets Haunted Mansion.
Muppets Haunted Mansion is the apex of great Mansion adaptions. So, it’s not fair to compare other adaptions to the greatness of that. If I am to be fair, I do appreciate that this book continues the trend of having characters dealing with fear while in the Mansion as that is a common occurrence in Mansion adaptions. However, this book takes it a step further and has the main character Audrey is suffering from anxiety and she sees a therapist to help her cope with her anxiety. Good Mansion adaptions find a way to make the fear relatable to the audience and make sense for the character. We will just ignore how the son in the Eddie Murphy was afraid of spiders and that was his only character trait. Going back to Muppets Haunted Mansion, we see how Gonzo is scared of not being the Great Gonzo and that he’d lose his friends if he wasn’t Great. The new 2023 movie which was decent and focused on a young mother and son moving into the Mansion deals with how the son copes after his father died and how that grief made him vulnerable to the tricks of The Hatbox Ghost pretending to be his father.
I believe that stories focusing on the Mansion work best when showing how the Mansion can be used as a way to I won’t say overcome fears because Audrey’s doctor points out, that isn’t always possible but rather come to terms and learn how to live with our fears.
by Moviefan
Trotting Towards Nightmare Night: My Little Pony # 11
October 26, 2023 in Blogs, Trotting Through Life
Another Nightmare Night is upon us and as I’ve said time and again before now that we are in the G5 era, it is starting to get a little more complicated to find material to look at. I had planned on covering Tierk for this year but that would have included his episodes and as I’ve said in my other series, I don’t want to look at film and television regarding the strike. So, I’ll perhaps save him for next year. I had also considered looking at an earlier comic from the G5 run of IDW comics but A. the title mistakenly led me to believe that it was an anthology full of various spooky stories but no, only one story in the comic and furthermore it falls towards the end of the Old Man Discord arc so plucking one comic out to review from a larger angle felt like a bad idea.
Now this issue deals with things I am unfamiliar with I.E. social media horror and creepypastas. I believe the creature seen on the cover is meant to be a reference to the Slender Man.
This is taken further when seeing how the ponies now have their own version of Reddit. Oh gawd, pony incels might exist. Anyhow this subreddit warns our characters to not partake in a seance that will summon the spirit of The Old Nag.
Seeing ponies uses social media and tablets will never not be weird considering how G4 while also including some technology had more of a magical feel to it compared to G5 where the new generation seems to be going for a mix of magic and technology.
by Moviefan
Halloween with Barbie: Too Many Ghosts (Barbie Halloween Special Vol. 2)
October 25, 2023 in Blogs
We continue our look at Barbie Halloween material with the second story from the Barbie Halloween special. While the first story is short and is a fun Scooby-Doo-like story, this one is even shorter and at times feels a bit more cliche in ways, that isn’t to say that it’s bad but rather that this story has been played out many times before.
by Moviefan
A Look at Disney’s Halloween Library: Frozen Polar Nights: Cast Into Darkness
October 24, 2023 in A Look at Disney, Blogs
Today I am looking at another Frozen book that delves into the world of Nordic mythology for another light horror novel starring Elsa and Anna. This book is so interesting as a Frozen fan as it is a celebration of all things Frozen, the authors reference many past works of Frozen literary work from past books that they had worked on to Frozen books written by others and a key character in this book was first introduced in an arc from the Dark Horse Frozen comics.
It was so nice to see past adventures Elsa and Anna had on the page referenced in this book and thankfully that doesn’t detract from the story being told. They are just nice nuggets for people that read those books to smile at and perhaps new readers might want to check out the other Frozen books. And I’d recommend it as there is not a bad Frozen book released yet.
by Moviefan
Halloween In Stoneybrook: Mary Anne’s Bad Luck Mystery (The Baby-Sitters Club Graphix # 13)
October 23, 2023 in Blogs
Sometimes I don’t understand release schedules from publications, this book I’m looking at today oozes Halloween and has the perfect feel for the fall season yet last year was released two days after Christmas. Releasing this book that late in the year is a missed opportunity in my opinion but I do imagine that the graphic novels have a schedule they must keep to even though they have skipped some of the books in this series. For example, this book comes much earlier in the graphic novel series than when the original was released.
The original was the seventeenth book in the series whereas the graphic novel was the thirteenth book released and considering what this book is about, I’d like to think that was done on purpose as 13 is known as an unlucky number and this book is all about bad luck.
Adapted By
Cynthia Yuan Cheng
This is a bit different from when looking at authors as the book still retains the story that Ann M. Martin wrote for the original book what Cheng did as an illustrator and cartoonist is find a way to bring those words to life in a three-dimensional spin. The BSC graphic novels have gone through numerous people working on them and they’ve all been great at bringing their flair to the BSC while keeping with what we know the characters to look like. Yes, I do understand that a sense of uniformity is to be expected when working on a series.
Cover
I adore this cover as it conveys a sense of mystery and fear seeing three members of the BSC walk through a graveyard late on Halloween night. It feels as though it comes late in the book and the fear has gotten to the best of them. This is easily the best cover for this story to showcase how much fear has overtaken the lives of the BSC. The other covers seem to depict things that aren’t that bad or rather minor inconveniences.
That’s not to say either of these are bad but this one truly grasps how dire the girls feel the situation is in front of them.
by Moviefan
Who You Gonna Call: Samhain Chanted Evening (The Real Ghostbusters Now Comics # 17)
October 21, 2023 in Blogs
If you were to think of the antagonist for the Ghostbusters, you would most likely go to Gozer and that would make sense considering Gozer was the first big bad that the GB boys faced off against in the original movie and Gozer was brought back to the Afterlife reboot.
However, that is the movies, now if you were to ask who the big bad for The Real Ghostbusters is, the answer would probably be Samhain.
Samhain appeared in multiple Halloween episodes of The Real Ghostbusters and typically proved to be the most formidable foe that the boys would go up against.  It took everything they had to stop him and during the first battle with Samhain, they just barely won. They were able to put up a great fight against him and keep him locked up in the containment unit but he’d find ways to break free as his powers grow stronger the closer it gets to the spooky holiday.
Besides returning to the animated series, Samhain would make appearances in the tie-in comic book series put by Now Comics and today I am going to take a look at one of these comics as it details much of what I said.
by Moviefan
On The Halloween Case with Nancy Drew: Ghost Stories (Nancy Drew: Girl Detective)
October 20, 2023 in Blogs
The supernatural and mystery stories seem to go hand-in-hand, look no further than this year’s A Haunting in Venice.
I have to believe that part of this comes from pitting people such as Hercule Poirot or in the case of today’s entry, Nancy Drew up against things as ghosts and spirits presents an interesting challenge as detectives work with tangible evidence and go off what they can see but that cannot happen when working in a mystery that involves ghosts or the supernatural. This is not the first book to feature Nancy Drew in an anthology of ghost stories as there were previous books with the original Mystery Stories run that featured Nance in these types of stories. An example is seen below.
However, the book we are looking at today comes from the Girl Detective series which was the second Nancy Drew series and it replaced the original series and was eventually replaced by the Diaries series.
