Avatar (2009 film) themselves to change into a Na'vi. "Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora", a 224-page book in the form of a field guide to the film's fictional setting of the planet of Pandora, was released by Harper Entertainment on , 2009. It is presented as a compilation of data collected by the humans about Pandora and the life on it, written by Maria Wilhelm and Dirk Mathison. HarperFestival also released Wilhelm's 48-page "James Cameron's Avatar: The Reusable Scrapbook" for children. "The Art of Avatar" was released on , 2009, by Abrams Books. The book features
Avatar (2009 film) "The Boston Globe" called it "the same movie" as "Dances with Wolves". Like "Dances with Wolves", "Avatar" has been characterized as being a "white savior" movie, in which a "backwards" native people is impotent without the leadership of a member of the invading white culture. Parallels to the concept and use of an avatar are in Poul Anderson's 1957 novelette "Call Me Joe", in which a paralyzed man uses his mind from orbit to control an artificial body on Jupiter. Cinema audiences in Russia have noted that "Avatar" has elements in common with the 1960s "Noon Universe" novels by Arkady