Hey guys, it’s me again, here with another post. I know I did a tag not that long ago, but I like Disney and I like books, so why not do the Disney book tag, right? As usual with these, I was not tagged by anyone (though I have been tagged in something now, and I will try to get around to writing that one as soon as I can). I just really like doing book tags.
Anyway, there are 10 questions and I don’t have much time to write this, so let’s just get into it, shall we?
1. The Little Mermaid – a character who is out of their element, a
“fish out of water”
For this one I have to go with Alek from the Leviathan trilogy, especially in the first book, because he’s a young prince who has to pretend to be a commoner, and he’s not great at it. Sometimes it’s funny, but sometimes it’s just cringey.
2. Cinderella – a character who goes through a major transformation
I feel like I can’t get this question and not say Tally from the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld. The girl is from a world where plastic surgery is more than just cosmetic, and, well… a lot happens to her. She undergoes several major transformations over the course of the series, in terms of both her personality and also her actual body. She is probably the character that changes the most out of any book I have read.
3. Snow White – a book with an eclectic cast of characters
I absolutely have to go with Savvy by Ingrid Law (and by extension its companion/sequel Scumble, though I didn’t like that one as much). This was one of my favorite books when I was a kid. It’s about a family for whom superpowers are hereditary, and the children come into their powers when they turn 13. We follow a girl named Mississippi Beaumont, nicknamed Mibs, as she discovers her power, and it sends her on a whirlwind adventure with her brothers and two preacher’s kids who have no idea what they are getting themselves into. Also featured are a timid bus driver named Lester and a very strong-willed and outspoken waitress named Lill. The characters in this book are just so weird and unique, and I love them.
4. Sleeping Beauty – a book that put you to sleep
As far as I can remember, I have never literally fallen asleep while reading a book, but that’s probably not what the question meant, anyway. As for books that were super boring, I have several. A lot of them I already talked about in my post from a few weeks ago, where I talked about some school books I hated. For today, though, I will go with one that might be sort of controversial꞉ The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. This is a super popular one for a lot of people, and I love high fantasy so, honestly, I thought I would love it.
Something about it just didn’t click with me though, for some reason. I found myself super bored during a lot of the book, and although I did finish it, I don’t plan on continuing with the series any time soon. I do, however, think I might want to retry the series when I’m in a better reading mood because I did legitimately think that the story and the writing itself was good. I don’t know if I ever will, though.
5. The Lion King – a character who had something traumatic happen to them in childhood
Um, every character? Are you even allowed to be in a fictional story if you didn’t experience a Traumatic Childhood™? I guess I’ll go with Adelina Amouteru from The Young Elites by Marie Lu. Not only does she have an abusive father, but she also lost her mother and an eye from a terrible disease when she was a child. That’s pretty serious.
6. Beauty and the Beast – a beast of a book (a big book) that you were intimidated by, but found the story to be beautiful
I bet you guys were waiting for my requisite mention of a Brandon Sanderson book. Well, here it is. The Stormlight Archive books are by far the biggest books I have ever read, all of them clocking in at 1,000 plus pages. They’re huge and intimidating, but they’re amazing and well-written. If you like fantasy, you need to read Brandon Sanderson. It just needs to happen. I think the Stormlight Archives might actually be my favorite series by him so far.
I guess, if I need to pick a specific book for this question, I will go with Oathbringer, the most recent book in the series, which I believe is also the longest thus far.
7. Aladdin – a character who gets their wish granted, for better or worse
Here’s another pretty obscure book rec for you guys. For this question, I am choosing Eva from the Hybrid Chronicles by Kat Zhang. I have only read the first book in this trilogy so far, but I loved it, and I don’t think I have ever heard anyone talk about this series on bookish Internet.
The books are set in a world where, when they are born, everyone has two souls who take turns controlling their shared bodies as they grow up. Eventually, though, they are supposed to settle, becoming only one person. When they don’t, they’re called hybrids, and they get locked away for being abnormal. Addie and Eva are hybrid, but they are hiding it, Eva’s personality hanging onto the edges of life, unable to control their shared body. All Eva wants is a chance to move again, just for a moment, but when that opportunity comes, danger comes with it.
8. Mulan – a character who pretends to be someone or something they are not
As you guys may know, I apparently have a thing for books that have this sort of narrative in them, so I could pick a lot of different characters from a lot of different books, most of which I have talked about far too often in the past.
This time, I am going to go with a character from a book I actually haven’t talked about before, or at least not in as much depth as I have some others. That character is Natasha from The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon, which I read back in February and really enjoyed.
Natasha, one of the novel’s protagonists, is a Jamaican-American girl whose family is about to be deported back to Jamaica and who, throughout the novel, is pretending that this is not the case, attempting to convince herself that this will not happen. This book is great. If you haven’t read it, you should.
9. Toy Story – a book with characters you wish would come to life
I could cheat and use another Brandon Sanderson book for this one, but I have already mentioned him in this post. My answer to this question might still be cheating, though, because while the characters I am choosing do technically come from a book, they originally came from a TV show. That show is Avatar꞉ The Last Airbender, though since this is a book tag and not a TV tag, I’m referring to the comics that were written after the show.
I just think that Aang and Katara and Sokka and Toph and everyone else would be fun to hang out with, and I just love them all so much. Avatar is one of my favorite TV shows of all time, if not my absolute favorite of all time. The comics were pretty good, too.
10. Disney Descendants – your favorite villain or morally ambiguous character
The problem with this one is that I love a lot of villains. In fact, I generally tend to like villains and anti-heroes more than I like the heroes. I just think they’re so interesting.
Another problem is that in some cases, revealing the name of a villain could actually be kind of spoilery, and I would like to avoid that. So, with that in mind, I am going to choose Queen Levana from The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. Not only is she a fabulous villain in her own right, but the backstory she is given in Fairest makes the reader (or at least, this reader) understand her so much better, and it just makes her actions even worse.
Okay! That’s all I have for this post! In honor of this being the Disney Book Tag, let me know down in the comments what your favorite Disney movie is, if you have one.
I’m not going to tag anyone specific, but if you haven’t done this tag and you want to, be my guest. Thanks for reading!
-Ariel