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Good book that is also a movie?


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Last summer we read the book Hugo and later watched the movie.  My boys LOVED it!  I want to do the same thing again this summer..read the book and then make a family night and watch the movie.  I just need some recommendations for GOOD books.

 

Here are some books we have read and watched the movie.

 

HUGO

Charlotte's Web

Mr. Poppers Penguins

 

My boys are 7 and 11...they love all genres of books!

 

Thanks in advance!!

 

 

 

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Some ideas...  some of these the book is great, some the movie, some both, all are decent IMO...

 

Nim's Island

Harry Potter

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

The Secret Garden

A Little Princess (the 90's version!)

Because of Winn-Dixie

Holes

Coraline (might be a little much for your 7 yo though)

Hoot

Howl's Moving Castle

The Indian in the Cupboard

Sounder (might be too much for your 7 yo)

The Sword in the Stone

The Witches

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

War Horse (might be too much for a 7 yo)

Treasure Island

The Iron Giant

The Borrowers (do the Studio Ghibli version)

 

I'll especially recommend doing Howl's Moving Castle, because I adore both all things Diana Wynne Jones and all things Studio Ghibli.

 

 

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The Yearling by Marjorie Rawlins.  Great movie with Gregory Peck.  Kind of old-fashioned, perhaps. 

 

Didn't they make a movie not too long ago of Bridge to Terabithia, the best book ever?  I haven't seen it.  Also I have not seen the movie for Where the Red Fern Grows and that is the second best book ever. 

 

Old YellerSwiss Family Robinson. 

 

Having trouble coming up with any recent ones...

 

 

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Mr. Revere and I, a book by Robert Lawson, Disney made a cartoon. Pretty decent. I think you can probably watch it on YouTube. :-)

 

Or maybe it was Ben and Me? Maybe it was both. :-)

 

Lassie Come-Home. Love the young Elizabeth Taylor and Roddy McDowall.

 

There's a good children's book, Hurry Home, Candy, that Disney did as "Little Dog Lost." It's available on Amazon for $30. ACK. But if I remember correctly, it's pretty close to the book.

 

Of course, Mary Poppins, the movie, was based on the first two Mary Poppins books.

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E. Nesbit's The Railway Children was done on Masterpiece Theater and we thought it was wonderful.

http://www.amazon.com/Masterpiece-Theatre-Children-Jack-Blumenau/dp/B00006HAZH/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

 

Nim's Island was a delightful book and we did really enjoy the movie

 

Pippi Longstocking as well

 

Sadly, so many movies are so modified for film as to be unrecognizable.

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Some ideas...  some of these the book is great, some the movie, some both, all are decent IMO...

 

Nim's Island

Harry Potter

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

The Secret Garden

A Little Princess (the 90's version!)

Because of Winn-Dixie

Holes

Coraline (might be a little much for your 7 yo though)

Hoot

Howl's Moving Castle

The Indian in the Cupboard

Sounder (might be too much for your 7 yo)

The Sword in the Stone

The Witches

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

War Horse (might be too much for a 7 yo)

Treasure Island

The Iron Giant

The Borrowers (do the Studio Ghibli version)

 

I'll especially recommend doing Howl's Moving Castle, because I adore both all things Diana Wynne Jones and all things Studio Ghibli.

 

Great list, we love Studio Ghibli as well.

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Sadly, so many movies are so modified for film as to be unrecognizable.

 

But sometimes that can be a good thing, or at least not a tragic thing. :-)

 

We love the Wizard of Oz, both the movie and the book, even though they are quite different (my mother saw the movie first, in the theater, and saw that it was based on the book. After the movie she went to the library and checked out the book, so eager to read it, and she hated it!).

 

National Velvet was a sweet movie--who could resist Elizabeth Taylor?!--but it bears scant resemblance to the book. I enjoyed the book, but still...

 

OTOH, don't get me started on the Lord of the Rings movies!!! :cursing:

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Our twins loved the Narnia books and movies.  I really thought they might be over their heads yet, but they've devoured them. We've done all the Sarah, Plain and Tall books this spring and gotten the movies from the library to watch as we've finished.  My almost 7 year olds have loved it.  We're listening to Winn-Dixie in the car right now and I just got the movie from the library too.  We also have done Jumanji and Zathura recently.

 

Some we haven't done but will when they're older:

 

Where the Red Fern Grows (SAD and one kind of gross scene that I remember)

Tale of Desperaux (didn't love the movie here)

Hatchet (Might be too much for 7 year old- plus one scene where he jumps off a rock naked that I remember)

Ramona books

Percy Jackson (I haven't seen the movie)

 

 

 

Love the other lists!  

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We are reading Tuck Everlasting and really enjoying it. I hope to find the movie for them to watch at some point.

 

With two boys of those ages, I would read The Hobbit. I think my son was 9 when we read it, and it was a lot of fun.

 

 

We read The Hobbit for our last lit book this year. We are going to watch the movie tonight. Just to caution, it is rated PG13 for "extended sequences of intense fantasy action violence and frightening images".  

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We saw a movie "based on" Sign of the Beaver called Keeping the Promise, although I see that there is an actual movie for Sign of the Beaver.  Somehow that escaped me :lol:

 

I liked to have my kids read children's adaptations of classic literature and then show them the movie - usually an old one from Turner Classic Movies.  A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, Around the World in 80 Days (1950s version), Mutiny on the Bounty (Charles Laughton and Clark Gable) are a few I can think of.

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FYI---the Gene Wilder Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is significantly less creepy than the Johnny Depp one.

 

Clearly *you* did not end up with Oompa Loompa nightmares from that psychedelic trip that was the Gene Wilder version like some people (which is to say, me as a young child). ;)  I think the book is creepy.  Both movies are creepy, just in different ways. 

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But sometimes that can be a good thing, or at least not a tragic thing. :-)

 

We love the Wizard of Oz, both the movie and the book, even though they are quite different (my mother saw the movie first, in the theater, and saw that it was based on the book. After the movie she went to the library and checked out the book, so eager to read it, and she hated it!).

 

National Velvet was a sweet movie--who could resist Elizabeth Taylor?!--but it bears scant resemblance to the book. I enjoyed the book, but still...

 

OTOH, don't get me started on the Lord of the Rings movies!!! :cursing:

 

:hurray: I'm always saying this and sometimes I feel like I'm the only one.  I say evaluate the movie as a movie and don't get hung up on whether or not it was "the same" as the book or how you envisioned the book.  It's comparing the two, thinking about someone else's vision, etc. that is part of the fun sometimes.  And sometimes the movie is just great in its own way, like The Wizard of Oz.

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:hurray: I'm always saying this and sometimes I feel like I'm the only one.  I say evaluate the movie as a movie and don't get hung up on whether or not it was "the same" as the book or how you envisioned the book.  It's comparing the two, thinking about someone else's vision, etc. that is part of the fun sometimes.  And sometimes the movie is just great in its own way, like The Wizard of Oz.

 

I try to do that, but sometimes the disappointment is so intense, as in LOTR (and my mother's response to the WoO book after seeing and loving the movie. My dds and I love both, BTW.)

 

I did appreciate the Harry Potter movies even as I wished so much had not been left out (and why couldn't there have been the details such as the wizarding world peeps wearing robes all the time? or Hogwarts students using quills and parchment to write with instead of pen/pencil and paper? But I digress...)

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I try to do that, but sometimes the disappointment is so intense, as in LOTR (and my mother's response to the WoO book after seeing and loving the movie. My dds and I love both, BTW.)

 

I did appreciate the Harry Potter movies even as I wished so much had not been left out (and why couldn't there have been the details such as the wizarding world peeps wearing robes all the time? or Hogwarts students using quills and parchment to write with instead of pen/pencil and paper? But I digress...)

 

Yeah, I get that.  LOTR doesn't bother me that much because I don't love Tolkien enough to be that firmly attached to his vision and I think the movies stand on their own (The Hobbit nonsense is a whole other can of worms though).  I get that way about the Narnia book/movie set.  There are things they changed that I just can't accept...  I can stand back and say, good movie...  but part of me is screaming, noooooo!

 

The Harry Potter movies are just uneven to me.  Some of them I like, some I don't.  I actually dislike when they tried to be too, too close to the books though.  I think they suffered from trying to directly translate so much...  but then, yeah, why did change these little details? Things like that bother me too.

 

But that's the fun, to me.  It's not people saying, it was different from the book, therefore it's bad.  It's saying, why not keep this detail, why not change that for cinematic value, etc.

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I love comparing too.  But I have to say that I hate when my daughter says, "Oh, that's what (insert character) is supposed to look like!"  I'm all, "NOOO!  What you imagined was right because it was yours, not some random casting decision." :)

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We listen to a lot of audiobooks and I usually try to pick ones that have a movie version even if the movie is quite different -- the kids love to pick out similarities & differences when we watch the movie.

 

So far we've done (I may be forgetting a few):

Wizard of Oz (also saw the musical on stage)

Charlotte's Web (& a live theater version -- low-budget, but loads of fun)

Winnie the Pooh

Treasure Island

the Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe

Doctor Dolittle (movie is VERY different, still fun though)

King Arthur & the Knights of the Round Table (watched Camelot)

Robin Hood

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Mary Poppins

A Midsummer Night's Dream (children's version for the book)

Alice in Wonderland

 

 

On my list for the future:

Frankenstein

Three Musketeers

James and the Giant Peach

Harry Potter

The Hobbit / LoTR

The Time Machine

Charlie & the Chocolate Factory

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You could have a marathon: read the book, then watch as many adaptations as you can find, and they are legion, lol.

 

I don't know, that Warner Bros. version of Black Beauty does me in every time,  I wouldn't have the emotional reserves to watch more than one!

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We are reading Tuck Everlasting and really enjoying it. I hope to find the movie for them to watch at some point.

 

With two boys of those ages, I would read The Hobbit. I think my son was 9 when we read it, and it was a lot of fun.

My dd and I read The Hobbit this winter and then watched both the movies. IMO-the movies are just horrible and she agreed. We just watched The Desolation of Smaug last weekend and both looked at each other 10 minutes in and said we were both completely lost. It was the longest three hours of both of our lives. :(

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My dd and I read The Hobbit this winter and then watched both the movies. IMO-the movies are just horrible and she agreed. We just watched The Desolation of Smaug last weekend and both looked at each other 10 minutes in and said we were both completely lost. It was the longest three hours of both of our lives. :(

 

My son and I really enjoyed the first movie, and we were both very disappointed with the second one.

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A few ideas with links to the movie version I like:

Peter Pan (My daughter is a huge Peter Pan fan and she says this one is the most like the book)

Little House On the Prairie

Anne of Green Gables

Black Beauty

Secret Garden

Little Princess (although I wish there was a version that ended like the book)

The Indian in the Cupboard (there were a few parts I didn't appreciate in the movie version)

Holes (I have not read the book so I can not say if it is like it.)

Charlotte's Web

The Borrowers this or this.

The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

I Am David (I haven't read this book but the movie was good.)

Pippi Longstocking

Winnie the Pooh

Beatrix Potter stories

 

 

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I'm confused, did you want them to use pen/pencil? There were quills in the movie. But I don't know if they were shown much. And Dolores Umbridge tortured them with a spell using a quill in her office.

 

No, I wanted them to *always* use quills and parchment. There was at least one scene where Hermione was taking notes or something using a pencil and paper.

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I don't know, that Warner Bros. version of Black Beauty does me in every time,  I wouldn't have the emotional reserves to watch more than one!

 

Believe me when I tell you that there isn't that much emotion in most of the others.

 

I don't know which one was Warner Bros. Who were the human actors?

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The Book Thief

Little Women (I loved the Winona Ryder version as a kid. It wasn't quite the book but it was good. Reading the book before made the movies better. Especially for the scene where Beth's dolls are all lined up)

Pollyanna

 

Might be a bit older... I was a precocious reader. Maybe someone knows the real ages on these.

How to make an American Quilt

The Secret Life of Bees

Enders Games (I know it is a teen book)

The Giver (another teen, but it is coming out as a movie this year I think)

Sherlock Holmes.

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Believe me when I tell you that there isn't that much emotion in most of the others.

 

I don't know which one was Warner Bros. Who were the human actors?

 

Sean Bean and the man who plays Carson on Downton Abbey.  I think it was made in 1994.  It really doesn't hold much back as far as the ill-treatment of the horse, which I guess makes the ending so much sweeter.

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Sean Bean and the man who plays Carson on Downton Abbey.  I think it was made in 1994.  It really doesn't hold much back as far as the ill-treatment of the horse, which I guess makes the ending so much sweeter.

 

Ah. I have not seen that one. The last one I saw was with Mark Lester, the young actor who was Oliver in the movie by the same name. ...I just added it to my Netlix queue. :-) Oh, and a quick IMDB search showed this many works with "Black Beauty" in the title (not all of them are about horses, lol).

 

Which reminds me of another book/movie: My Friend Flicka. The movie with Roddy McDowall was very good, and reasonably close to the book, but any differences didn't bother me. There were also movies made from the sequels: "Thunderhead" and "The Green Grass of Wyoming." 

 

There was a dog book of a similar theme called "Beautiful Joe." There's no movie to go with it, though.

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Clearly *you* did not end up with Oompa Loompa nightmares from that psychedelic trip that was the Gene Wilder version like some people (which is to say, me as a young child). ;)  I think the book is creepy.  Both movies are creepy, just in different ways. 

 

Not enough Agree in the world. I withstood the Oompa Loompas well enough, but that scene in Wonka's/Wilder's office near the end? Scarred me for life.

 

And I'll second the recommendation for the relatively recent Charlotte's Web movie (with Julia Roberts voicing Charlotte). I did not expect to like that at all, but it was quite sweet.

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The Secret Garden

Little Women, but not the Shirley Temple one nor the more recent one that takes place in America

The Hobbit

LOTR

The Incredible Journey -- that has a movie, right?

Treasure Island

My kids loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Gene Wilder movie

Mary Poppins

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Little Women, but not the Shirley Temple one nor the more recent one that takes place in America

 

The Incredible Journey -- that has a movie, right?

 

 

But..but...Little Women *does* take place in America. And I don't think there's a Shirley Temple adaptation of it.

 

Disney did an adaptation of The Incredible Journey, but there's a more recent one that is much more enjoyable. :-)

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But..but...Little Women *does* take place in America. And I don't think there's a Shirley Temple adaptation of it.

 

Disney did an adaptation of The Incredible Journey, but there's a more recent one that is much more enjoyable. :-)

I think she must have meant Little Princess. ;)
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One that hasn't been mentioned yet is 101 Dalmatians. My son loved the audio book as an 8 year old. He did not like the animated Disney version but he doesn't like any movie based on a book.

 

Oh, we big pink puffy heart the book, but my dc would not allow me to bring the animated movie into the house. The one with Glen Close is only marginally better. :glare:

 

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