…But the book is always better than the movie
It’s needless for me to discuss the necessities of reading for your daughter. It’s equally needless for me to state the benefits of reading with her. Beyond reading children’s books, there are a plethora of books that are engaging for her and potentially nostalgic for you.
One of the first children’s novels I had read aloud to her was E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (1952). She thoroughly enjoyed her bedtime story from page to page and often didn’t want to go to sleep asking me to read one more chapter. After we finished the book, I told her that a studio made a film version of the story and we should watch it. We opted for the 2006 version of the motion-picture. She watched it with much anticipation having the full knowledge of the story. The movie was pretty consistent to the book given the simplicity of the story, but invariably the film version had to be trimmed and edited for length. But having the richness of the characters’ history and even recalling some of the written dialog, my daughter allowed the movie to visually unfold to augment her already rich imaginations. It was truly precious to see.
“The movie was good, but the book was much better.” I couldn’t have agreed more.
The next book/movie we enjoyed was L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). It was odd that this book took us months to read. But it was a time over the summer with more activities and longer days which made for shorter turndown routine at night. There were stretches of day we hadn’t touch that book, so I wound up rereading parts which brought encore delights to some very descriptive sections. When we finally finished the book, I asked my daughter if she was interested in watching the movie. To which she declared in joyful exclamation, “They made a movie of this book?” She approached this 1939 movie with the same innocence as Charlotte’s Web. From beginning to end, she watched with delight and even the black and white preamble to the film which represented the dusty surroundings of Dorothy’s Kansas. The splendor of colors and sounds as Dorothy traveled through Oz were accurate reminders of the story we had read and this time, she got to experience it visually. When the movie ended, my daughter said, “That’s it? That was quick!” She quickly realized that some of the passages we spent weeks enjoying was either missing or modified in the film version. She went on pointing out more differences as she compared and contrasted. Finally, she said, “The movie was good, but the book was much better.” I couldn’t have agreed more.
One of my most favorite was the journey of Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect in Douglas Adam’s then 4-part-trilogy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1985-2009). We saw the 2005 movie version before returning to the remainder of the trilogy. The movie wasn’t a spectacular success and many of Adam’s descriptive subtext simply cannot be made visually. Even my daughter found the movie to be particularly lacking. But it was a fun hour and a half and the Heart of Gold did take us to a few familiar places. In the end, my daughter said, “I’m glad we read the book first. I don’t think I would have understood the movie if we didn’t read it first.”
Notwithstanding some amazingly written screenplay, dialog, casting, set design and of course the advent of CGI to bring stories to life, the printed word is still the gold standard for narration. For my daughter, my articulation of the text allows her to immerse herself into a world that is truly created by her. For my daughter, reading allows her to engage the story as a third person, bringing her closer to the actors of the story and identifying with them much more closely. It’s like she’s been a travelling companion on their journey. Her bookshelf is beginning to be filled with many of these journeys she’s mentally taken.