Books into Movies

I wasn't going to post until Monday as I'm planning to leave this morning on a driving trip up the East Coast with my dad and kids, but reading Michelle's blog post this morning has inspired me.  And besides perhaps short blog posts during my vacation, Monday's Made It link up is already done.  I'm excited to share what I created, and actually made-up myself.

Now, my post and Michelle's over at Big Time Literacy is about the movie trailer for the book The Giver.  If you haven't read it, well, that's a shame.  Don't read my post, or hers, go get that book NOW!  Like Michelle, it also is tied as my second favorite book of all time, and can easily be read in a few hours.

 

I wouldn't call myself an avid reader, but that's partly because I think reading is like drugs for me.  Once I start a book I don't do anything else until it's done.  I'm not a good wife, mom, or teacher for a short period of time.  And if the book is part of a series....  Example: Hunger Games series in 3.2 days.  The 0.2 is because we were having a New Years party and my husband MADE me stop reading the final book in my third day to help get ready, and I was less than a hundred pages away from finishing.  He doesn't get it, but had a point, so I finished in the morning.

Now, I don't care to ever watch a movie based on a book I read because I get too upset.  My daughter was all excited to tell me about this movie, because she knows it is my favorite book.  My reaction was simply, "Oh, no..."  Just reading Michelle's top 5 things that the trailer shows how they changed the story is enough, but I also don't like it when the characters don't look the way I imagined, and that's nobody's fault.

So for Michelle's 5 reasons:  Number 1 is a super bummer.  I remember the teasers when Jonas sees glimpses of color a couple of times.  The author doesn't tell you exactly, but let's you know that all of a sudden things look "different" to him.  When you figure out he's seeing color, that is a brilliant moment in the book.

Number 4:  A spaceship, really????  Do we have to add ridiculous action into a movie to get people to watch it these days...

Now back to the book.  It's early, and maybe my brain isn't understanding Michelle's explanation of the ending.  When I read it, I thought that the ending was left to the readers interpretation, which I thought was brilliant too.  Kind of like the ending to the movie Total Recall (did it happen, or was he really just dreaming the whole time).  Did Jonas really find the perfect community to live happily for the rest of his life with Gabe, or was he dead and this was his "heaven"?  I always preferred the latter, as perfectly happy endings are for fairy tales.  And then, sequels to the book.  The Messenger and Gathering Blue were very good, but I still don't like that I found out my interpretation of the book's ending was wrong.  I've not read Son yet, which is the 4th and final component to this series, that came out in 2012.  I'm sure they will find a way to keep going with these movies, and find a way to ruin them too.

My biggest problem with taking great children's books and making them into movies is that kid's will watch the movies first, which ruins the great experience with the text.

BTW - The other book that is tied with this one for me (not a kid's book) is A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini (author of Kite Runner).  I don't know if any of the many people I've recommended this book to have ever read it, but every woman should.  POWERFUL

 

Now, our goal is to leave here in an hour, heading to Niagara Falls as stop number 1.  So excited:)

Mary