Artemis Fowl

From the Publisher:

Twelve-year-old Artemis is a millionaire, a genius-and above all, a criminal mastermind. But Artemis doesn't know what he's taken on when he kidnaps a fairy, Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Unit. These aren't the fairies of the bedtime stories-they're dangerous!

My thoughts:

Artemis Fowl, kind of like a Richie Rich of the fantasy world (if Richie Rich lived in the future and if he were a criminal mastermind) is not a new story. I bought the original book for my middle school classroom library back in the early 2000s from a Scholastic book fair. I subsequently added to the series and even picked up some of the graphic novels like Artemis Fowl Arctic Incident in 2009.  What this means is that the author, Eoin Colfer, found a good character (like Rowlings and Harry Potter) to tell a great story, and he has been able to profit from that and leave his teaching gig behind. No shame in that. In addition, Disney has picked this up and there is a movie coming out to add to the other multimedia products Colfer has been able to conjure up from his main character. 

That being said, nothing was wrong with the story, so that is not different in this version. What is different is the artwork on the covers. The artwork too needed to be punched up and is a little closer to the graphic novels art. 

The Artemis story is almost 20 years old, which technology wise is jurassic, however, because Artemis' world is in the fantasy/fairy realm, although he is a tech genius, this story does not suffer from contemporary stories that take place in real time, like Laurie Halse Anderson's graphic novel Speak. The technology is not a hindrance to the plot like it is in Speak. Colfer successfully repackages Artemis for my grandchildren. That just goes to show that good storytelling is good storytelling.