Is it a bit pathetic to count this book for my yearly Goodreads challenge? Only if you take that challenge too serious. I like to have every book I read in that list, even if it's a 40 page picture book for children with maybe two sentences on each page.
I am obsessed with the movie which is not that interesting of a thing, just that I used to hate these kind of comedies and Will Farrell. But I guess I stopped taking myself so seriously and have some fun with film and not try to prove what a sophisticated person I am or something because now I often love these kind of silly films and "Elf" is maybe the highest on my personal list. I mean, when Buddy takes a jump to put the star on the tree, I am lying on the floor laughing for minutes. Every time. This might be pathetic, true, but it's a fact.
This was cute to flip through. Naturally, it has to leave out a lot and shorten events of a 90-minute movie to fit the book's tiny space. But I was positively surprised by how coherent this was as a story, I genuinely think you could read this without knowing anything about the movie and completely get it. While not enough of the humor makes it into these pages, there are some of the iconic original quotes ("you smell like beef and cheese", "you sit on a throne of lies"). The art style wasn't quite what I was hoping for but it was good enough.
I honestly don't know if this would be good for kids or why anyone would choose this over the movie, but I guess you could do that. But I grabbed it from the library after watching the movie again this Christmas season and it extended the simple joy I get from the movie by a tiny bit.