Teen "Princess of Mars" Reader: "I'm going to tell all my friends to read it and if they don't I'll tie them to a chair and read it to them"

Michael Sellers A Princess of Mars

As many of you know we have a teen reading project going on now to do a focus group on the reaction of modern day teens to “A Princess of Mars” by Edgar Rice Burroughs — the book that is the source material for Disney’s “John Carter”. We just started this a few days ago and we have 20 teens reading the book now. The first survey came in last night — and I thought I would share it since a number of you have shown curiousity about this.

The windup to this survey was a classic: “I’m going to tell all my friends to read it and if they don’t I’ll tie them to a chair and read it to them”

Aside from that, here were the other responses: (Choices were Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly disagree).

Note: There could be what some might theoretically be some very mild SPOILERS in here. I’m just sayin’…….

1. Held my interest? Strongly Agree
2. Would recommend? Strongly Agree
3. Will read next book in series? Strongly Agree
4. Story is too old fashioned. Strongly Disagree.
5. Both guys and girls would enjoy? Agree.
6. Vocabulary was difficult to understand? Disagree
7. Excited to see the movie? Strongly agree
8. Favorite character? Tars Tarkas, because he was the only one of his race to have emotions other than pride and anger.
9. Least favoriate character? Sarkokja because she’s a jerk.
10. Most memorable scene(s): When he unites the Tharks because I saw them in my mind’s eye a giant stampeding herd of mounted thoats and it looked awesome.
11. Favorite part of the book? The cliffhanger at the end because it is the best cliffhanger ever.
12. Brief Essay: How did it compare to your expectations? Surprises? Disappointments? It was better than I expected because I had never heard of it before and most good books are talked about among other people that read books. The language was nothing compared to The Arabian Nights (original text) which I read last month. I didn’t like how Edgar didn’t give any background or further story with the guy that lived in the atmosphere factory. I am going to tell all of my friends to read this book and if they don’t i will tie them to a chair and read it to them.

6 comments

  • they are re-reeleasing all the books in three collections with great cover art!

    they are releasing a bunch of kids books too, three are currently listed on amazon . . . but they seem geared towards REALLY little kids

  • I don’t think they actually contemplated the possibility that kids would like it. There is always a sense that “today’s kids” (whenever today happens to be) are different. So far our teen reading project seems to be reinforcing the idea that today’s kids aren’t really different — the ERB magic seems to be working on them. I will refrain from making any bold statements until all the questionnaires are in from this first batch … but the trend seems clear that the books still work their magic. Anyway, one step at a time……let’s see what the results are and we’ll go from there.

  • Disney should be doing this kind of work. The various Disney publishers, Disney Editions, Golden Disney etc. should have re-released the entire series and had the new books by Stuart Moore etc. on the shelves months ago and promoting the hell out them to the young readers crowd- HP/HG style….you know, a little pre-hype.

  • awesome 😀

    HAHAHAHAH THIS KID IS ONE OF US 😀

    and I agree, we need to know more about that dude in the atmosphere plant, Dynamites warlord of mars provides some good fitting backstory for that issues 10-12

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