CCBC-Net Archives

"Looking for Alibrandi"/books on film

From: Ridge, Judith <Judith.Ridge>
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 14:04:50 +1000

Looking for Alibrandi" was a best selling and award winning novel in Australia (it remains a big seller after ten years) and it was made into a feature film in 2000. The author of the book, Melina Marchetta, wrote the screenplay - in fact, she won the scriptwriting prize in that year's NSW Premier's Literary Awards. The film did very well here and was a really successful translation of book to screen. Obviously, this was in large part due to Marchetta writing the screenplay, but I think the filmmakers would have remained pretty much faithful to the book anyway; it's very well loved here in Australia (indeed, something of a publishing phenomena in a country not exactly prone to them! Not local ones, anyway.)

Unfortunately, the film's website no longer seems live, but there's masses of stuff about the book and film on the net. The book is widely studied at senior high school level, although people much younger (girls especially, although older boys enjoy it too) read it. I noted a lot of the reviews on Amazon were from 12 year olds
(there is a US edition, from Orchard Books). It's also a book that had/has an enthusiastic adult readership.

If anyone has read "Alibrandi", they might be interested to learn that after 10 years, Marchetta finally published her second novel - very highly anticipated here, I can tell you. The novel is called "Saving Francesca", and it's marvellous. Her writing has matured enormously in the ten years.

Judith



Judith Ridge
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Received on Tue 15 Jul 2003 11:04:50 PM CDT