When it comes to novels written for kids featuring characters who are kids, Roald Dahl ranks among the best of the best, sharing the status of all-time great with the likes of Beverly Clearly, Judy Blume, and J.K. Rowling. The British author (1916–1990) wrote enough classics to keep a fifth grader busy for months, specializing […]
This month, a very big kidlit-to-film adaptation came galloping into theaters: Steven Spielberg’s long-awaited take on Roald Dahl’s classic, The BFG. And thanks to a loyal script and Spielberg’s willingness to leave the signature darkness of Dahl’s stories pretty much intact, the big-screen version of The BFG is, by all accounts, a whizz-popping good time. […]
In this screen-dominated world, it can be hard to get even bookish kids reading. Not to mention, so many kids’ publications—from the classic to the commercial—have been made into hard-to-resist, CGI-animated blockbusters. How can we get our children lost and found in the world of literature? While it may be tempting to recommend reading the […]
There’s a picture hanging on our bedroom wall of a giraffe. It doesn’t look like a giraffe or even have the colors of a giraffe; actually, it looks more like a worm than anything else. However, my five year-old son insists it’s a giraffe, and seeing that he painted it, we hung it with pride. Both […]
The first rule of book-to-movie adaptations: The book is almost always better than the movie. Even if the flick is awesome on its own, it will likely look different on screen than it did in your head while you were reading the book. You pictured the main character as being a brunette with glasses, but […]