Entertainment
'The Giver' Film is a Go; What Other Children's Novels Should Get a Big Screen Version?
Lois Lowry's The Giver is finally getting a film adaption. (Yay!) The dystopian novel is a personal favorite for many young readers, and it's about time that the story is shared on the big screen. But now that The Giver — which will star Jeff Bridges and could start shooting in South Africa in only a few short months — has gotten its long-overdue movie adaptation, what other children's novels should get theirs? Here's a list of books that deserve to hit the big screen.
'The Giver' Film: What Other Children's Books Should Be Movies?
Lois Lowry's The Giver is finally getting a film adaption. (Yay!) The dystopian novel is a personal favorite for many young readers, and it's about time that the story is shared on the big screen. But now that The Giver — which will star Jeff Bridges and could start shooting in South Africa in only a few short months — has gotten its long-overdue movie adaptation, what other children's novels should get theirs? Here's a list of books that deserve to hit the big screen.
The 'Shadow Children' Series, Margaret Peterson Haddix
Like The Giver, this series — which starts with the novel Among the Hidden — is about a dystopian society. In Margaret Peterson Haddix's series, it's a famine that causes a series of political complications. The government has decided that the world is too overpopulated and issues a mandate that each family have no more than two children, sending third children into hiding... and then a rebellion. How very Hunger Games.
'Walk Two Moons,' Sharon Creech
This powerful novel follows the heroine Salamanca on a journey to find her mother. As she takes us on her trip, she tells us the story of her friendship with Phoebe Winterbottom, a girl whose mother has also left her family, and the mysteries surrounding them. A film version could definitely beg comparisons to small films like The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
'Tangerine,' Edward Bloor
How this novel ever was labeled as children's book is beyond us. What starts off as a simple coming-of-age story — a boy with bad vision moves to Tangerine, Fla., and has to deal with his sports-hero brother — gets really crazy really fast. We won't give too much away, but there's murder, mystery, and a shocking ending that feels way too disturbing to be featured on a sixth-grade reading list. That being said, a PG-13 movie version could be a fantastically creepy psychological thriller.
'Godless,' Pete Hautman
Questioning God and religion is a natural part of growing up. In Hautman's novel, Jason Bock, a boy with doubts about his own religious upbringing, starts his own "religion" — one that worships water towers — as a social experiment. When his friends get a little too caught up in it, Bock worries that he's done something terrible. For a kid's book, the novel has a seriously deep premise (not to mention connections to Hollywood's favorite "religion," Scientology), and it'd be interesting to see it translate onto film.
'Crash,' Jerry Spinelli
A coming-of-age tale — this time, told through the eyes of a popular bully — football player "Crash" is reformed through friendship with the school "geek," Penn. The sweet, funny book could be a Diary of a Wimpy Kid for older audiences.
