The Beatles: Yellow Submarine

Vintage Beatles! Always fun, love the Peter Max style illustrations.....very off the wall story line but so characteristic of that happy era!

I'd suggest watching the movie first if you want to get the full "Yellow Submarine" experience. However, this book is the perfect gift for any Yellow Submarine fan. It's the perfect thing to bring up those fond memories of the movie. :)

From a 1966 album track to a hit single to a cartoon,this has a life of its own nowadays.Leading to "Octopus'Garden" then to the film "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" which took the same theme,there's been an album which combined George Martin's incidental music,a recent reissue as the "Yellow Submarine Songtrack" which added more songs in place of the Martin music and there's a DVD of the cartoon plus one about the Making Of. In Liverpool is the lifesize Yellow Submarine constructed at Cammell Lairds shipyard and no end of merchandizing. Not bad for a film which only starred the Beatles for 2 minutes!

This book is like a dose of calm and warm when you read it. If you love the film you're going to love the book either. You can read it to your kids when they want to hear a strange but beautiful story before bed time. The drawings and the story are fantastic. The only problem is that you will never know how Ringo pushed the panic button.

My two kids are huge Yellow Submarine fans, so this book was a natural fit. The artwork is taken directly from the film, with some slight modifications. The storyline, however, leaves out all of the songs - which in my opinion undercuts some of the story's charm. Gone too are many of the illustrations which accompanied the songs. As a result, you really only get a partial visual retelling. As a historical comment, since the Beatles has very little to do with the actual movie other than licensing their songs and performing in an awkward two minute appearance in the end of the film, the absence of their music in a book on the subject is both unfortunate and fitting. The absence of much of the film's breathtaking artwork, on the other hand, is inexcusable. That being said, the actual writing is quite clever. The text does its best to weave in Beatle's song titles into the prose - I suppose as a way of giving some sort of nod to the music which inspired the movie. The reason I gave it 4 stars is that, despite my nitpickiness, my kids love the book. And if they like it, I'm a happy dad.