Lights... Camera... Action!

When it comes to movies many are based off books especially children and young adult works. So it shouldn't be too surprising that some of the Newbery Award Winners have been filmed. The book I'm currently (re)reading is Holes, famous for its movie adaptation that, due to the author writing the screenplay, was incredibly faithful. Read the book, then catch the movie (it's long but good)!

For another adaptation we go back to Disney for the maybe less faithful even booed by the author, Wrinkle in Time. It was enjoyable the first time I watched it - before the book. After reading the book the movie uh- pales in comparison.

Long ago I read Call It Courage, I believe it was like a million degrees working the desk that day, and I recommended that book. Now I have finally gotten my grubby little fingers on the Disney movie and will watch it tonight! I hope that the adaptation is a good one!

But Disney isn't the only one adapting books into movies, King of the Wind was an excellent movie that I highly recommend (just like the book). Get A Clue is based on The Westing Game, and, while a fun movie, is definitely not as faithful as it could have been. Then, I almost forgot, is The Tale of Desperaux, which was such a poor adaptation that I am glad it was on Netflix and no additional money was spent.

I know there are others but I don't think I've seen them! Which one is your favorite?

Strawberry Girl, Newbery Winner 1946

Many people comment on two things concerning this book - dialect and the ending. I'm usually conflicted with dialect - I know it exists, I love listening to it, but I hate reading it most of the time. Since dialect is really something meant to be heard it really loses something when it is written. However, I felt that this dialect read fairly naturally (I admit that there were some places I had to use my context clues to figure it out.). The ending was a little bit too neat but not really to the detriment of the rest of the book in my opinion.
Now for my other thoughts. I really did enjoy this book. It is yet another pioneer story that I am drawn towards. Birdie Boyer could really be compared with Caddie Woodlawn and Laura Ingalls. There are so many similarities in these three texts (the young female protagonist for instance) that if a young person loves one, I'm sure they'll at least like the others. Strawberry Girl, despite having the girliest title, is the work that I think would most appeal to boys, because man-o-man they're a feuding!