Children’s Books to Movies

September 7, 2013 / still a dreamer

As I’m sure you might agree, books that have been made into movies can have a rather spotty success rate. In my experience, rarely has a movie based on a book been as fulfilling as the book itself though there certainly have been some, and a few surprisingly good at that. There also have been some disastrous movies that had I not read the book first would have dissuaded me from ever reading it. But what about children’s books?

I recently took the plunge and watched movies based on two of my very favorite children’s books, both middle grade – Skellig by David Almond and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. That the Skellig movie had to add on a tag after the title – “the Owl Man” – should have been my first tip off, but I was open. David Almond is a brilliant writer and won the Printz Award for this particular novel. One of the things that sets him apart is the sense of the unexpected, of magic, that he brings to everything he writes. Where this movie failed for me is that in attempting to reach its audience it felt it necessary to define and explain the unexplainable. The beauty of Skellig the novel was that you were left at the end still not knowing who – or what – Skellig was. Was he a man? both man and bird? an angel? The reader never knows. In the movie, he is more or less defined. And then there were several hokey, (to me anyway), visual machinations, such as Skelling taking Michael for a ride on his back while he flies, and in two instances a kind of spinning in the air where he heals Michael’s hand and later the baby sister. Plus the movie barely touches upon the wonderful and unique character of Mina and her relationship with Michael , nor of that with his friends. In sum, there were interesting things about the movie, but as a reflection of the novel, Skellig the movie fell far short for me.

A Wrinkle in Time fared a bit better in my estimation, but again, the movie couldn’t really compare to the book. I think the movie did a pretty good job of showing the characters of Meg and Charles Wallace, and I enjoyed Alfre Woodard as Mrs. Whatsit, Alison Elliott as Mrs. Who and Kate Nelligan as Mrs. Which. The visuals of the children traveling through the tesseract to get to the different planets couldn’t have had too many ways to show it, I suppose, but it was a stretch. The interesting thing about this movie, made in 2003, is that it was a made-for-TV movie. I suspect it could have been more successful if actually made as a true movie. A Wrinkle in Time, like Skellig, raises bigger issues than the surface story, in this case, an adventure to save the children’s father. It’s a coming of age story for Meg but also asks what’s most important in life and how can evil be overcome. I think the movie did a very good job of making that clear, especially in the scene where Meg is able to pull Charles Wallace back from the tenacious evil of It. What I particularly enjoyed is that in the Bonus Features that were on the DVD there is an interview with the late Madeleine L’Engle. That alone may have been worth getting the DVD.

The Kitchen God’s Wife

July 20, 2013 / still a dreamer

Had you asked me if I were interested in reading the story of a Chinese woman growing up in China in the late 20’s through the end of World War II, now living in California, and her relationships with family, I probably would have said `no.’ Had you told me the author was Amy Tan, who wrote The Joy Luck Club, I would have immediately changed my answer.

I am so impressed with how Ms. Tan immediately pulls you into her story; it seems so simply written. I don’t know how she does it, but I am engrossed from the first page. Pearl, the American born daughter of Winnie Louie, who grew up in China, begins the tale in the first person. She is observing her mother’s and aunties’ behaviors, their reliance on custom and tradition, and its seeming irrelevance to current day life. She doesn’t really understand her mother and is critical of her negativity and superstitions. They’ve had a rift between them since the death of Jimmy, Pearl’s father, when she was fourteen.

What becomes apparent in the first few chapters is that there are many secrets being kept by both Winnie and Pearl. But even deeper secrets are kept by Winnie and longtime friend, Helen … secrets that are bound by fear, pain, dreadful memories, and the need to follow traditional Chinese customs. Believing she may be dying, Helen threatens to reveal the secrets kept for over 50 years and free herself of the burden. For Winnie, this cannot happen, and so, with current day family relationships established, the story switches to Winnie becoming the narrator and looking back at the past. She will be the one to at long last reveal the secrets, not Helen.

She begins her story when a child of six in China, when her beloved mother, and fifth wife to her father, disappears, and how Winnie’s upbringing falls to Old Aunt and New Aunt and their deeply traditional views. As in The Joy Luck Club, the story is not only about the characters, but about a culture and a country of which I suspect most of us know little. As Winnie tells her story, we learn about the critical qualities of politeness, respect and saving face, the role luck – or belief in it – plays in people’s lives, and the inability to escape a traditional marriage, no matter how abusive.

The unfolding of Winnie’s life, her dangerous marriage, the loss of her children, the toll taken by war, all are answering the questions that her daughter has about her mother and why she is the way she is. This would be a deeply moving story of one woman’s life and her survival against enormous odds in any culture, but in The Kitchen God’s Wife, we also learn about China and a span of time and series of events that changed the country and its residents forever.

Ms. Tan brings it all together in the final chapters, a satisfying conclusion, and one which had me go back and read Pearl’s chapters a second time. Highly recommended.

Dirt Cheap Book Alert!!

March 29, 2013March 29, 2013 / still a dreamer

Did that get your attention? If you, (and your kids), love to read, don’t miss the upcoming Hunterdon County Library Annual Book Sale!

It’s coming up this month on Saturday and Sunday April 20th and 21st at the National Guard Armory on Rt. 12 in Flemington. Check the library’s web site for location, directions and complete details.

Saturday, hardbound books are generally $2.00, paperbacks $1.00, and on Sunday, they’re half that. The main armory houses fiction, children’s books and YA, and the secondary building houses non-fiction. And it’s free as is the jitney transport back and forth from the county complex to the armory when their lot is full. Hard to beat if you love books. It is anticipated that there will be approximately 120,000 books for sale.

I understand that this event draws people from quite a distance, so even if you’re not “local,” come on down and take advantage of the wonder of books for what is truly a pittance.

A Small, Wonderful Movie – I Am

March 6, 2013March 7, 2013 / still a dreamer / 4 Comments

What would you want to say to the world if it became possible that you might soon die? That’s what movie director Tom Shadyac asked himself after he suffered a severe concussion in a bicycling accident. He was told the horrible after-effects could last for 2 years or for life. Or he could die. So he asked himself what he wanted to say in the event that should happen.

I’d never heard of Tom Shadyac, but recognized his movies when he discussed them in the beginning of this beautiful documentary. He directed Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Bruce Almighty, The Nutty Professor and several other similar minded films. He realized that where he’d been with humor and outrageous silliness was not where he wanted to go. He had two questions and wanted to make a documentary … What’s wrong with our world? and What can we do about it?

This short, (1 hour 17 min.), documentary moved me to tears at times, as Shadyac explored these questions through interviews with some of the greatest minds of our times – authors, scientists, religious leaders, poets, and others. He interviews or shows clips of Howard Zinn, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama and other notables, including his own father who founded St. Jude’s Research Hospital for Children with Danny Thomas. The thread of the documentary follows how mankind has lost its way in our quest for winning and competition, but shows how we are literally wired in our DNA for cooperation and compassion. He shares how intuitively the animal world works together – birds flock, fish shoal (see photo) – for the greater good, and how less technologically developed societies work cooperatively with one another. In American Indian tribes where sharing was the norm, hoarding was seen as a sickness, and the members of the tribe set out to heal this person.

Shadyac has gathered so many amazing clips of everything you can imagine to bring us along on his journey of inquiry – history, science, spiritual thought, the natural world. Especially moving was one short clip of something I’d never before seen except in a still … a world famous black and white photo of a slender Chinese man blocking the way of army tanks in the 1989 student protest in Tiananmen Square. In this clip, you watch him move repeatedly to block the tank each time it maneuvers. Mankind has reached out endlessly to stand up for or help others in need, in tragedies such as 9/11, Katrina, Haiti, or events such as civil rights marches and so many other instances. As he explored these issues, Shadyac came to conclusions about his own life of celebrity excess and changed that, too.

He came to realize that `What is wrong with this world?’ has an answer … I Am. But maybe I’m asking the wrong question, he thought. Perhaps I should also ask, `What is right with this world?’ Yup …. I Am.

Unless you are one of those people who believes whoever dies with the most toys wins – and I’m sure you would never have read this far if that were true – then I feel pretty confident that you will be inspired and moved by this film.