Looking for Alibrandi
LFA is the book I wish we had done in Year 12 instead of Educating Rita. We had to do something called a topic area. Our topic area was Crossing Boundaries and exploring all those issues presented in the text about crossing boundaries – physical, emotional, cultural, etc. I wish we had done LFA, which is about an Italian girl battling through Year 12 in an eastern suburb catholic girls’ school, because I could relate to it a lot more than I could to a middle-aged Pommie housewife attempting to get a university education. It’s a lot easier to write about something you can relate directly with. It’s a short novel, and I polished it off in about twice the time it takes to watch the movie. The novel was published in 1992, but it’s still fresh for now and offers a lot more insight than the movie. Movies adapted from novels can rarely hope to reflect the depth of a novel – movies do help visualise them though. Recommended.
1:23pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow 
I am in year 11 and in the process of evaluating the movie text type. In some aspects it is easyly related to, but in others i find hard to grasp. This is a mandaotry text that my school has chosen to use. When teaching all levels of english it is much easier for the ‘less intellectualy gifted’ to watch a movie then to constantly re-read a novel, although it might be be short. If anyone needs my notes that i have completed, please post a comment with your email, and i will indure to help you with your studies.