Fans of Terry Deary's bestsellers eagerly awaited Dominic Brigstocke's Horrible Histories: The Movie. But there are dozens of other features based on books available to rent from Cinema Paradiso. Having covered a range of swashbucklers and period sagas in Good Old-Fashioned Adventure and delved into the quirkiest and darkest recesses of the imagination in Fantasy and Fear, we conclude our special three-part holiday survey with a look at some all-time family favourites and a selection of YA classics in the making.
Once upon a not so long ago, girls and boys read very different books. Everyone started off with the likes of Enid Blyton's Noddy before graduating to the Secret Seven and the Famous Five. But, while girls moved on from Beatrix Potter to follow Blyton to St Clare's and Mallory Towers or joined Elinor Brent-Dyer at the Chalet School, boys drifted away from the Reverend W. Awdry's Thomas the Tank Engine series to enjoy the antics of Frank Richards's Billy Bunter, Anthony Buckeridge's Jennings and HE Todd's Bobby Brewster.
Nowadays, the lines have been blurred by authors like David Walliams, who appeals to boys and girls alike, whether on the page or on TV with such BBC adaptations as Mr Stink (2012), Gangsta Granny (2013), The Boy in the Dress (2014), Billionaire Boy (2016) and Grandpa's Great Escape (2016). And that's one of the great plus points about Cinema Paradiso, as you can rent a title and leave the kids to view it alone - or, better still, watch it together as a family.
The Two and Only
Two authors who insisted on writing for everyone were Theodore S. Geisel (aka Dr Seuss) and Roald Dahl. We are trying to focus on live-action rather than animated movies, even if this does mean paying insufficient attention to the likes of Phil Lord and Chris Miller's 2009 adaptation of Judi and Ron Barrett's Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (1978) or the three Dean DeBlois films inspired by Cressida Cowell's 2003 bestseller: How to Train Your Dragon (2010); How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014); and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019). But we're going to make an exception for such masters of their art.
The Oxford-educated Dr Seuss started writing children's books in the late 1930s. Although he had penned several propaganda films under his own name during the Second World War, his famous pseudonym first appeared in the credits for Roy Rowland's The 5000 Fingers of Dr T (1953), an original Technicolor musical in which Bart Collins (Tommy Rettig) persuades plumber August Zabladowski (Peter Lind Hayes) to help him thwart tyrannical piano teacher Dr Terwilliker (Hans Conried) in his plan to kidnap 500 children and force them to play a giant keyboard.
Directed by Chuck Jones and narrated by the inimitable Boris Karloff, the 1966 animated version of the 1957 title, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, is easily Seuss's most celebrated work. It's also the most revisited, as Ron Howard's live-action adaptation, The Grinch (2000), with Jim Carrey excelling as the green festive spoilsport, has since been followed by Yarrow Cheney and Scott Mosier's The Grinch (2018), which featured the voice of Benedict Cumberbatch.
For a take on The Cat in the Hat (1957), Cinema Paradiso users will have to make do with Hawley Pratt's 1971 animated version, which he followed with a 1972 take on The Lorax, which was reworked by Chris Renaud in 2012, with Danny DeVito voicing the guardian of the forest abutting the walled city of Thneedville.
Animators Ralph Bakshi, Tony Collingwood and Bob Clampett respectively contributed 'Butter Battle Book', 'Horton Hatches an Egg' and 'Daisy-Head Mayzie' to The Best of Dr Seuss (1994), which was followed on to the small screen by The Wubbulous World of Dr Seuss (1996-98). These shows introduced Dr Seuss to a new audience and prompted the release of features like Jimmy Maynard and Steve Martino's Horton Hears a Who! (2008), which reworks the 1954 story to star Jim Carrey as the elephant from the Jungle of Nool and Steve Carell as the Mayor of Whoville, Ed McDodd, who has 96 daughters and a son named JoJo with his wife, Sally O'Malley (Amy Poehler).
Born in Cardiff to Norwegian immigrant parents, Roald Dahl began writing after serving with distinction as a fighter pilot and a spy during the war. One of his first brushes with cinema came when he followed scripting Lewis Gilbert's James Bond thriller, You Only Live Twice (1967), by adapting another Ian Fleming story, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Magical Car (1964). Directed by Ken Hughes, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) charted the adventures of flying car inventor Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke), children Jeremy and Jemima (Adrian Hall and Heather Ripley), confectioner's daughter Truly Scrumptious (Sally Ann Howes) and the wicked Child Catcher (Robert Helpmann).
However, Dahl had been writing children's stories of his own for over a decade, although almost four decades had to pass before James and the Giant Peach (1957) was finally animated by Henry Selick in 1996 to enable James Henry Trotter (Paul Terry) to have marvellous adventures away from his horrible aunts Spiker (Joanna Lumley) and Sponge (Miriam Margoyles). There was a much shorter gap between the book and the first film adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), as Mel Stuart released Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in 1971, with Gene Wilder in the title role and Peter Ostrum as Charlie Bucket, who finds a golden ticket that entitles him to the trip of a lifetime.
Unfortunately, Dahl disowned the film after David Seltzer was hired to rework his script and significantly changed the ending. Indeed, he refused to allow anyone to film the sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972). One can only wonder what Dahl would have made of Spike Brandt's Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (2017). But what a double bill it would make with Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), which saw Freddie Highmore team with Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka after actors as different as Nicolas Cage, Bill Murray, Will Smith and Jim Carrey had all been linked with the role during the protracted pre-production period.
The inspired combination of Mara Wilson and Pam Ferris enlivened Danny DeVito's 1996 adaptation of Matilda (1988), as six-and-a-half year-old Matilda Wormwood takes on tyrannical headmistress Agatha Trunchbull at Crunchem Hall school. Father and son Jeremy and Sam Irons joined forces to prevent scheming property developer Robbie Coltrane from trying to drive them out of their garage in Gavin Millar's Danny the Champion of the World (1989), which Dahl adapted from his own 1975 story.
Written in 1983, The Witches came to the screen under the direction of Nicolas Roeg in 1990, with Anjelica Huston revelling in the dual role of Miss Eva Ernst and the Grand High Witch, whose bid to hold a convention under the banner of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is rumbled by young Luke Evesham (Jasen Fisher) and his Norwegian granny (Mai Zetterling). However, Dahl disliked this critically acclaimed adaptation because it tinkered with his original ending and one can but hope that Robert Zemeckis doesn't make the same mistake with his 2020 remake, which is set to star Anne Hathaway in her first villainous role.
David Jason had voiced the lead in Brian Cosgrove's animated version of The BFG (1989), but Steven Spielberg used CGI to help turn Mark Rylance into the Big Friendly Giant who shows Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) around Giant World in The BFG (2016). Wes Anderson employed the tried-and-trusted technique of stop-motion animation on his 2009 adaptation of Fantastic Mr Fox, which follows the efforts of farmers Bean, Boggs and Bunce to eliminate Mr Fox (George Clooney) after he breaks his promise to wife Felicity (Meryl Streep) and drifts away from his new career as a newspaper columnist to return to a life of crime with sidekick, Kylie Opossum (Wally Wolodarsky).
It was back to CGI, however, for Jan Lachauer, Jakob Schuh and Bin-Han To's Revolting Rhymes (2016). Quentin Blake provided the illustrations for Dahl's 1982 collection of verses and he also contributed to the 1990 publication, Esio Trot, which was adapted in 2015 for director Dearbhla Walsh by Richard Curtis and Paul Mayhew-Archer for James Corden to narrate the story of how Mr Happy (Dustin Hoffman) seeks to win the heart of Mrs Silver (Judi Dench) by helping her tortoise, Alfie, to grow bigger.
Every Home Should Have One
There are some books that everyone should have read, no matter what their original target audience might have been. Set during the American Civil War, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868) has been a screen staple since first being adapted in a lost 1917 British film. Katharine Hepburn played Jo March in George Cukor's 1933 adaptation, which co-starred Frances Dee as Meg, Joan Bennett as Amy and Jean Parker as the tragic Beth.
You can also find BBC's marvellous 1970 serialisation, with Jo Rowbottom (Meg), Angela Down (Jo), Janina Faye (Amy) and Sarah Craze (Beth) as the March sisters, as well as Vanessa Caswill's 2017 small-screen interpretation. For many, however, the most authentic adaptation is Gillian Armstrong's Little Women (1994), which saw Susan Sarandon's Marmee try to protect Trini Alvarado's Meg, Winona Ryder's Jo, Claire Danes's Beth and Kirsten Dunst's Amy from the harsher realities of life in 1860s America.
Johanna Spyri's Heidi (1880) has been delighting young readers for nearly 120 years. Shirley Temple took the role of the eight year-old orphan sent to live in the Swiss Alps with her grandfather (Jean Hersholt) in Allan Dwan's enduringly charming 1937 version, which many believe has yet to be bettered. There have been several attempts, however, with Noley Thornton being paired with Jason Robards in Michael Ray Rhodes's 1993 Disney mini-series, Emma Bolger and Max von Sydow uniting in Paul Marcus's 2005 feature retelling and Anuk Steffen and Bruno Ganz teaming up in Alain Gsponer's 2015 Swiss adaptation, which updates the Heimatfilm style that has been popular in Germanic cinema since the 1930s.
Shirley Temple found herself following Mary Pickford when it came to a couple of classic turn-of-the-century stories. Pickford had been cast as Rebecca Randall in Marshall Neilan's 1917 adaptation of Kate Douglas Wiggin's Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903). But Temple's character was called Rebecca Winstead in Allan Dwan's loose 1938 version, in which the musically inclined orphan is sent to stay with Aunt Miranda (Helen Westley) after stepfather Harry Kipper (William Demarest) blames her for failing to win the Little Miss America radio talent show.
Pickford and Temple also have Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess (1904) in common. This has been adapted a number of times since Pickford headlined Marshall Neilan's 1917 silent which was scripted by pioneering female writer Frances Marion. In her first Technicolor outing, Shirley Temple took the role of Sara Crew in Walter Lang's The Little Princess (1939), as she is sent to Miss Minchin's School for Girls when her father (Ian Hunter) goes to fight in the Boer War. The colonial conflict is relocated to India in Alfonso Cuarón's 1995 version, which also sends Liesel Matthews's Sara to New York for her unhappy education at the hands of Eleanor Bron's Maria Minchin.
Written in 1911, Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden was first filmed eight years after its publication, with Lila Lee playing orphan Mary Lennox and Paul Willis as Dickon, the boy she befriends after being sent to live with a wealthy, but taciturn uncle at Misselthwaite Manor in Yorkshire. The role of Mary passed to Sarah Hollis-Andrews in Dorothea Brooking's 1975 BBC serial, which also featured Andrew Harrison as Dickon and David Patterson as Mary's bedridden cousin, Colin Craven. Francis Ford Coppola executive produced Agnieszka Holland's 1993 interpretation, which starred Kate Maberly as Mary, while Glennellen Anderson took the part in Owen Smith's 2017 variation, which will soon be joined by Marc Munden's imminent updating, which shifts the action from Edwardian times to the period after the Second World War and the Partition of India and is set to star Colin Firth as Archibald Craven and Julie Walters as housekeeper Mrs Medlock.
The story of an orphan who is adopted by a Canadian farmer and his sister (who had been expecting a boy to help with the chores), Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (1908-21) was first filmed in 1919 and, then, most famously in 1934, when actress Dawn O'Day was so taken by the character she played that she changed her name to Anne Shirley. This delightful tale has been remade several times for television, with Kim Braden headlining the Joan Croft-directed BBC adaptation of Anne of Avonlea (1975). There was also a 2016 feature version directed by John Kent Harrison with Ella Ballentine and Martin Sheen and Sara Botsford. But the pick is Kevin Sullivan's 1985 version and its 1987 sequel (which drew on Anne of Avonlea), with Megan Follows in the title role and Richard Farnsworth and Colleen Dewhurst as Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. In 2000, Follows returned for Stefan Scaini's Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story, which sees her move to New York to confront a scheming novelist who tries to steal her manuscript.
Four decades passed between Mary Pickford headlining the first screen adaptation of Eleanor H. Porter's Pollyanna (1913) and David Swift's timeless 1960 Disney retelling, which earned Hayley Mills a special Oscar for her performance as Pollyanna Whittier, the orphaned 12 year-old daughter of missionaries who is sent to live with Aunt Polly Harrington (Jane Wyman) in 1900. However, Sarah Harding moved the story forward to 1912 in Pollyanna (2003), an ITV adaptation that twinned Amanda Burton with Georgina Terry as the girl who can always find reasons to be glad.
The first of eight novels that Laura Ingalls Wilder published about her Mid-Western childhood in the late 19th century, The Little House in the Big Woods (1932) became familiar to British children after they were read on the BBC's much-missed storytelling series, Jackanory (1965-96). However, it's The Little House on the Prairie (1974-83) that is most fondly remembered (and not just by Amy Farrah Fowler in The Big Bang Theory) for its homely tales about Charles Ingalls (Michael Landon), his wife Caroline (Karen Grassle) and their daughters, Mary (Melissa Sue Anderson) and Laura (Melissa Gilbert).
Much loved by generations of British readers, Noel Streatfield's Ballet Shoes (1936) centres on the three Fossil sisters and the dance school run by Madame Fidolia and Miss Theodora Dane. It was adapted in six parts by the BBC in 1975 with Elizabeth Morgan, Jane Slaughter and Sarah Prince as the sisters, and as a TV feature in 2007 by Sandra Goldbacher. The latter sees Emma Watson, Yasmin Paige and Lucy Boynton play Pauline, Petrova and Posy, who find themselves living with Sylvia Brown (Emilia Fox) and Nana (Victoria Wood) in 1930s London after their explorer guardian, Gum (Richard Griffiths), disappears while on an expedition.
Although there had been a clutch of cartoons featuring the little French girl created by Ludwig Bemelmans for his Madeline series (1939-61), it wasn't until 1998 that Daisy von Scherler Mayer plucked Hatty Jones out of obscurity to play the intrepid pupil determined to prevent Lord Covington (Nigel Hawthorne) from closing the Parisian school run by nun Clara Clavel (Frances McDormand). And, while we're in the French capital, we should also mention Laurent Tirard's Little Nicholas (2009), which was adapted from a 1959 novel by René Goscinny (who had created Asterix the Gaul with Albert Uderzo) and stars Maxime Godart as the scamp who doesn't like the idea of having a baby brother and tries to raise the money to have him kidnapped.
German author Erich Kästner's Lottie and Lisa (1949) has twice been filmed by Disney as The Parent Trap. David Swift's 1961 version saw Hayley Mills play Sharon McKendrick and Susan Evers, who have no idea that they are twin sisters when they meet at Miss Inch's Summer Camp for Girls, while Lindsay Lohan was selected to essay Hallie Parker and Annie James, who have a similar summer encounter in Nancy Meyers's 1998 adaptation. All we need now is someone to release Emeric Pressburger's all-but forgotten 1953 take on Kästners tale, Twice Upon a Time (1953), which starred real-life siblings Yolande and Charmaine Larthe as the separated twins.
It pays to be patient. After all, Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy (1964) took a while to reach the screen, but it was worth the wait, as Bronwen Hughes's 1996 adaptation features a fine performance by Michelle Trachtenberg as Harriet M. Welsch, whose habit of writing everything down in a notebook makes her very unpopular with her friends when they get to read it. Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted (1997) similarly offered a prime role to Anne Hathaway in Tommy O'Haver's 2004 variation, as Princess Ella of Frell seeks to rid herself of the unwanted 'gift' of unquestioning obedience that was given to her at birth by misguided fairy Lucinda Perriweather (Vivica A. Fox).
Four-Legged Friends
Storytellers have been using animals to comment on the human world since the days of Aesop in Ancient Greece. Among the most influential tales is Anna Sewell's Black Beauty (1877), which was first filmed in 1921. James Hill directed the most memorable adaptation in 1971, with Patrick Mower as the squire who takes the eponymous stallion from impoverished farmer Mark Lester. The narrative was reworked for ITV as The Adventures of Black Beauty (1972-73), which starred Judi Bowker and Staci Dorning and became a firm teatime favourite. Daniel Haller transferred the story to 1880s Maryland in his TV-movie, Black Beauty (1978), before Caroline Thompson returned the equine odyssey to its rightful setting and hired Alan Cumming to narrate what is essentially the autobiography of a horse in Black Beauty (1994).
Clearly indebted to Sewell, Walter Farley's The Black Stallion series (1941-89) was wonderfully adapted by Carroll Ballard as The Black Stallion (1979), with Kelly Reno as the young boy shipwrecked on an island with the wild Arabian stallion with whom he forges a winning partnership under trainer Mickey Rooney. Robert Dalva took over direction for the sequel, The Black Stallion Returns (1983), which sees Reno crossing the Sahara when his prized horse is stolen.
The setting is even more exotic in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (1894), which was endearingly animated by Wolfgang Reitherman for Walt Disney in 1967. However, it has also been adapted several times in live-action form, with Sabu playing Mowgli in Zoltan Korda's beautiful 1942 Technicolor account before the role passed to Jason Scott Lee in Stephen Sommers's 1994 retelling and Neel Sethi in Jon Favreau's 2016 Disney re-imagining. Culled from the same book's 'Toomai of the Elephants' chapter, Robert Flaherty and Zoltan Korda's Elephant Boy (1937) also starred Sabu as the Indian youth who persuades British colonial official Peterson (Walter Hudd) to let him ride Kala Nag on an expedition to round-up some wild elephants to be tamed and put to work.
As Renée Zellwegger demonstrated in Chris Noonan's Miss Potter (2007), the stories of Beatrix Potter are altogether gentler affairs - or are they? Written in 1902, The Tale of Peter Rabbit formed part of Reginald Mills's unmissable collaboration with the Royal Ballet on The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971), which also introduces viewers to Mr Jeremy Fisher, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, Jemima Puddle-Duck, Squirrel Nutkin and Pigling Bland. Among the charming animated versions on offer from Cinema Paradiso is The Beatrix Potter Collection (1995), which should go down well with tinies who enjoyed James Corden's mischievous voice work in Will Gluck's Peter Rabbit (2018), a raucous account of the carrot-loving bunny's feud with the short-fused Mr McGregor (Domhnall Gleeson).
Set in markedly less hospitable terrain, Jack London's The Call of the Wild (1903) was filmed with Clark Gable as the Yukon prospector in William A. Wellman's 1935 adaptation. Charlton Heston took over in Ken Annakin's 1972 variation, in which a German Shepherd called Buck learns to be a sled dog, before Richard Gabai attempted an updating in 2009, in which Ariel Gade seeks to tame the injured wolf-dog cross she finds while staying with grandfather Christopher Lloyd in Montana. London's White Fang (1906) would also be filmed several times, including Randal Kleiser's 1991 adaptation, with Ethan Hawke as Jack Conroy, who treks from San Francisco to the Yukon in the late 19th century and is aided to find his father's gold-mining stake by a wolfdog who becomes his faithful companion.
Kenneth Grahame's exquisite The Wind in the Willows (1908) has brought the best out of numerous animators, with Disney's The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad (1949) being followed by Cosgrove Hall's peerless series, The Wind in the Willows (1984-88), which utilised the vocal talents of David Jason as Toad, Peter Sallis as Rat, Richard Pearson as Mole and Michael Hordern as Badger. Dave Unwin was also fortunate in being able to call on Rik Mayall (Toad), Michael Palin (Rat), Alan Bennett (Mole) and Michael Gambon (Badger) for his 1995 animation, which was followed by Terry Jones's 1996 live-action take, in which he cast himself as the irrepressible owner of Toad Hall, alongside Steve Coogan as Mole and fellow Pythons Eric Idle as Rat, Michael Palin as The Sun, John Cleese as Toad's lawyer. Rachel Talalay assembled another splendid ensemble for her 2006 BBC adaptation, with Matt Lucas (Mr Toad) and Bob Hoskins (Badger) being joined by Mark Gatiss (Ratty), and Lee Ingleby (Mole), However, this version might not be suitable for the youngest viewers.
Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle series (1920-34) centred on a man who could talk to animals and the role had been engagingly played by Rex Harrison in Richard Fleischer's unfairly maligned 1967 musical, Doctor Dolittle, and by Eddie Murphy in Betty Thomas's Doctor Dolittle (1998) and Steve Carr's Doctor Dolittle 2 (2001) before Kyla Pratt took over the white coat as Maya Dolittle in Rich Thorne's Doctor Dolittle 3 (2006) and Craig Shapiro's Doctor Dolittle 4: Tail to the Chief (2008). Watch out next year for Robert Downey, Jr's bid to reinvent the role in Stephen Gaghan's The Voyage of Doctor Dolittle.
One of America's most-loved children's books, Margery Williams's The Velveteen Rabbit (1922), hasn't had much luck with its seven screen adaptations. But a hint of the story's enduring appeal is evident in Michael Landon, Jr's 2009 version, which uses live-action and animation to chronicle the life-changing summer when Toby (Matthew Habour) is sent to stay with his strict grandmother and discovers the toy bunny that had once belonged to his father. Felix Salten's The Hound of Florence (1923) has twice been reworked as The Shaggy Dog. In Charles Barton's 1959 Disney version, Fred MacMurray plays the retired postman whose son (Tommy Kirk) is turned into a sheepdog by an enchanted Borgia ring. But Brian Robbins's 2006 remake has lawyer Tim Allen transform after being injected with a top-secret serum. In between times, Dean Jones played a grown-up version of Wilby Daniels, whose return to his hometown of Medfield goes paws up in Robert Stevenson's The Shaggy DA (1976).
AA Milne's Winnie the Pooh (1926) has been synonymous with Walt Disney's conception of the 'silly willy nilly old bear', who has been voiced by Sterling Holloway and Jim Cummings in numerous animated outings that are available to rent from Cinema Paradiso. The story of how Milne came to write the novel was related by Simon Curtis in Goodbye, Christopher Robin (2017), which featured Domhnall Gleeson as Milne and Will Tilston and Alex Lawther as his son at the ages of eight and 18. Marc Forster struck a lighter note in Christopher Robin (2018), however, which cast Orton O'Brien and Ewan McGregor in the title role to show how the denizens of Hundred Acre Wood rally to help the adult Christopher Robin remember how to smile. Among the familiar voices on the soundtrack are Toby Jones as Owl, Peter Capaldi as Rabbit and good old Jim Cummings as both Winnie the Pooh and Tigger.
Walt Disney tried on two occasions to persuade Henry Williamson to sell him the rights to his 1927 novel, Tarka the Otter. However, he was convinced that the story of a young otter's struggle to survive after the death of his mother wasn't suitable for the screen. Indeed, Williamson even abandoned his own efforts to produce a screenplay. In the mid-1970s, however, he agreed to let wildlife documentarist David Cobham adapt the story, with Peter Ustinov narrating the screenplay by renowned naturalist Gerald Durrell (who is profiled in Bob Evans's Gerald Durrell: Himself and Other Animals, 1995). The result is as compelling as Jack Couffer's otter saga, Ring of Bright Water (1969) which was adapted from Gavin Maxwell's 1960 book and reunited Bill Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers, who had starred in James Hill's Born Free (1966), which had re-enacted Joy and George Adamson's African adventures with Elsa the lioness.
Although Anne Revere won an Oscar for her performance as Mrs Brown in Clarence Brown's 1944 adaptation of Edith Bagnold's National Velvet (1935), it was Elizabeth Taylor who found fame after her spirited display as Velvet Brown, the Sussex 12 year-old who wins a horse called The Pie in a raffle and persuades drifter Mi Taylor (Mickey Rooney) to give her riding tips so that she can enter the Grand National at Aintree. Richard and Florence Atwater's Mr Popper's Penguins (1938) waited over three-quarters of a century to be discovered by film-makers. But Jim Carrey's performance as the New Yorker who gives his apartment an icy makeover to accommodate the six penguins he has inherited makes Mark Waters's 2011 adaptation a treat for all ages.
Eric Knight's Lassie Come Home (1940) introduced the collie who went on to feature in 11 movies after debuting opposite Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor in Fred M. Wilcox's Lassie Come Home (1943), which reveals what happens after Joe Carraclough's parents (Donald Crisp and Elsa Lanchester) sell their son's pet to the Duke of Rudling (Nigel Bruce) in Depression-hit Yorkshire. Now played by Peter Lawford, Joe grows up to join the RAF in S. Sylvan Simon's Son of Lassie (1945) and Laddie joins him on a trek across occupied Norway after they are shot down during a bombing raid. Daniel Petrie moved the franchise Stateside in Lassie (1994), so that a homeless collie can help 13 year-old Matt Turner (Tom Guiry) come to terms with relocating from Baltimore to Tazewell County in Virginia, before Charles Sturridge reclaimed the tale for God's Own Country in Lassie (2005), which cast Jonathan Mason as miner's son Joe Carraclough and Peter O'Toole as the Duke of Rudling.
Mary O'Hara's My Friend Flicka (1941) was adapted two years after its publication by Harold S. Schuster to show how 10 year-old Ken McLaughlin (Roddy McDowall) helps Gus (James Bell), a hand on the Wyoming ranch owned by his parents, Rob and Nell (Preston Foster and Rita Johnson), to train a one year-old filly named Flicka after the Swedish word for 'girl'. The quartet returned for Louis King's Thunderhead, Son of Flicka (1945), which sets Ken the problem of rearing a rebellious albino colt. However, the role passed to Robert Arthur in King's Green Grass of Wyoming (1948), as Ken hopes that a trotting horse named Crown Jewel can win enough prize money to save the Goose Bar Ranch. The enduring popularity of O'Hara's stories led to Michael Mayer casting Alison Lohman as 16 year-old Katy McLaughlin so that she can tame a wild mustang in Flicka (2006).
Sterling North's Midnight and Jeremiah (1943) received the Disney treatment in Harold D. Schuster and Hamilton Luske's So Dear to My Heart (1949), a blend of live-action and animation set in Indiana in 1903 that stars Tommy Driscoll as Jeremiah Kincaid, whose drawings of Danny, the black-and-white lamb he has adopted, magically come to life. Jim Kjelgaard's Big Red (1945) was filmed by Norman Tokar for Disney in 1962, with Gilles Payant as the French-Canadian orphan who is hired by Walter Pidgeon to train an Irish Setter to become a champion show dog. But trouble looms when the hound disappears from a cabin in the woods.
Elwyn Brooks White's Charlotte's Web (1952) was animated by Hanna-Barbera in 1973, with Debbie Reynolds taking the title role. It was given a live-action retelling by Gary Winick in 2006, with Julia Roberts voicing Charlotte A. Cavatica, the spider who befriends Wilbur the pig (Dominic Scott Kay) after he moves to a new farm after being spared as a runt by Fern Arable (Dakota Fanning). E.B. White's Stuart Little (1954) had to wait for special effects techniques to catch up before it could be adapted by Rob Minkoff in 1999. Michael J. Fox voiced the white mouse adopted by Frederick and Eleanor Little (Hugh Laurie and Geena Davis) as a brother for their son, George (Jonathan Lipnicki). However, the humans are more marginalised in Stuart Little 2 (2002), as the plucky Stuart enlists the help of Snowbell the cat (Nathan Lane) to rescue a bird named Margalo (Melanie Griffith) from the predatory Falcon (James Woods).
Disney recognised the irresistible appeal of Fred Gipson's Old Yeller (1956) as it was adapted by Robert Stevenson the year after its publication to chart the friendship between 1860s Kansas farmboy Travis Coates (Tommy Kirk) and a loveable mongrel with a bad habit of stealing food. Dodie Smith's The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1957) was animated for Disney by Clyde Geronimi as 101 Dalmatians (1961) before Glenn Close made a marvellously malevolent Cruella de Vil in Stephen Herek's live-action gem, 101 Dalmatians (1996), which was followed by Kevin Lima's sparky sequel, 102 Dalmatians (2000).
Michael Bond's A Bear Called Paddington (1958) was the first of 14 books published over the next six decades and Cinema Paradiso users of a certain age will have fond memories of Ivor Wood's BBC adaptations (1975-80), which were voiced by Michael Hordern. However, the voice the younger generation now associate with the bear from Darkest Peru is Ben Whishaw in Paul King's Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2 (2017), which earned Hugh Grant a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the BAFTAs for his performance as vainglorious actor Phoenix Buchanan.
Sheila Burnford's The Incredible Journey (1961) was snapped up by Disney for James Agee to turn into a 1963 classic, in which narrator Rex Allen follows the progress of Luath the Labrador Retriever, Bodger the Bull Terrier and Tao the Siamese cat, as they trek 250 miles across the Canadian wilderness to return to the family home. The story was markedly more anthropomorphised by Duwayne Durham in Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993), with Chance the American Bulldog, Shadow the Golden Retriever and Sassy the Himalayan cat being respectively voiced by Michael J. Fox, Don Ameche and Sally Field. Ralph Waite (who was best known for playing Pa in The Waltons, 1973-81) took over from Ameche for David R. Elsis's sequel, Homeward Bound 2: Lost in San Francisco (1996).
Disney soft-soaped the message in Sterling North's Rascal: A Memoir of a Better Era (1963) in reworking it into Norman Tokar's Rascal (1969), which centres on the unlikely fin-de-siècle friendship between Wisconsin teenager Sterling North (Bill Muny) and a lively baby raccoon. Gordon and Mildred Gordon's Undercover Cat (1963) was also snapped up by Uncle Walt and reworked by the ever-reliable Robert Stevenson as That Darn Cat! (1965), which saw Hayley Mills end her six-film contract with the studio as Patti Randall, who becomes convinced that Siamese tom DC is on the track of some kidnapping bank robbers. Oddly, the exclamation mark had gone missing by the time that Christina Ricci assumed the role in Bob Spiers's 1997 remake.
Monica Dickens's Cobbler's Dream (1963) found its way on to television as Follyfoot (1971-73), the BAFTA-winning series that followed the teenage Dora (Gillian Blake) to the farm for retired horses run by her uncle, Colonel Geoffrey Maddocks (Desmond Llewellyn). The Coorong coast of South Australia provides the setting for Colin Thiele's Storm Boy (1964), which reached the screen a dozen years later through Henri Safran to show how a lonely boy named Mike (Greg Rowe) is helped by Fingerbone Bill (David Gulpilil) to raise three pelican chicks named Mr Proud, Mr Ponder and Mr Percival after their mother is shot by hunters.
Lois Duncan's Hotel For Dogs (1971) was adapted by Thor Freudenthal in 2009 and starred Emma Roberts and Jake T. Austin as the orphan siblings who open a shelter for strays with the help of pet shop manager Johnny Simmonds. However, few animals books have been brought to the screen with more wit and charm that Dick King-Smith's The Sheep-Pig (1983), which was beautifully adapted by George Miller as Babe (1995), which earned seven Oscar nominations, including a nod for Best Picture. Christine Cavanaugh voices the orphan piglet who wins the heart of Farmer Hoggett (James Cromwell) during a guess the weight competition and is taught how to herd sheep by Fly the Border Collie (Miriam Margolyes). The sequel, Babe: Pig in the City (1998), sees our porcine hero head to Metropolis to raise the money to save the farm after causing an accident that leaves Hoggett in hospital.
There's plenty more canine charm on display in Wayne Wang's 2005 adaptation of Kate DiCamillo's Because of Winn Dixie (2000), which cast AnnaSophia Robb as the lonely preacher's daughter who befriends a scruffy stray who helps her come to terms with life in the small town of Naomi, Florida. But the action is more up in the air in Wil Shriner's 2006 take on Carl Hiaasen's Hoot (2002) to show how teenager Logan Lerman enlists the help of tomboy Brie Larsen and brother Cody Linley in order to save the population of burrowing owls in the Florida town of Coconut Cove.
Enduring Family Favourites
Starting with Just William (1922), the novels and stories written by Richmal Crompton about William Brown became required reading for boys and girls across the class range. Three films were made about his exploits in the 1940s, while there were TV series in the early 1960s and 1990 either side of ITV's Just William (1977), which cast Adrian Dannatt in the title role and Bonnie Langford as Violet Elizabeth Bott, who kept threatening to 'scream and scream and scream' until she was sick.
The story of how Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) persuaded Pamela Lyndon Travers (Emma Thompson) to let him adapt her 1934 novel, Mary Poppins, has become familiar thanks to John Lee Hancock's Saving Mr Banks (2013). But nothing beats settling down with the entire family to watch Robert Stevenson's Mary Poppins (1964), which saw Julie Andrews win the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance as the Edwardian nanny who brings a little magic into the lives of Jane and Michael Banks.
Disney was so pleased with young stars Matthew Garber and Katin Dotrice that he reunited them in Stevenson's The Gnome-Mobile (1967), an adaptation of Upton Sinclair's 1937 story about a two-foot gnome named Jasper (Tom Lowell) trying to find his 900 year-old grandfather, Knobby (Walter Brennan). Half a century later, Ben Whishaw and Emily Mortimer played the adult Michael and Jane in 1930s London, who have need of their erstwhile guardian, who is now essayed by Emily Blunt in Rob Marshall's Mary Poppins Returns (2018).
A very different kind of child-minder took centre stage when Christianna Brand's Nurse Matilda series (1964-74) was adapted by Kirk Jones as Nanny McPhee (2005), which stars Emma Thompson as the Victorian governess who succeeds where 17 predecessors had failed in controlling the seven unruly children of widowed undertaker, Cedric Brown (Colin Firth). Thompson also wrote the script for Susanna White's sequel, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010), which moves forward to 1943 to show how Isabel Green (Maggie Gyllenhaal) needs a little domestic help to juggle running a farm with refereeing the squabbles between her three children and their two snooty cousins. Riffing on a similar theme, Anne Fine's Madame Doubtfire (1987) gave Robin Williams one of his best-loved roles in Chris Columbus's Mrs Doubtfire (1993), in which actor Daniel Hillard poses as Scottish nanny Euphegenia Doubtfire to keep an eye on the three children being raised by ex-wife Miranda (Sally Field), who has been granted sole custody until Daniel can prove to the court that he can hold down a steady job.
Mary Rodgers's Freaky Friday (1972) has kept audiences amused for over four decades, with Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster playing the mother and daughter who suddenly change places in Gary Nelson's 1976 Disney version and Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan stepping into their shoes for Mark Waters's 2003 reboot for the same studio. Thomas Rockwell's How to Eat Fried Worms (1973) took much longer to find its way on to the screen. But it was eventually filmed by Bob Dolman in 2006, with Luke Benward playing the 11 year-old who dares to eat 10 worms in a single day after being humiliated by class bully Adam Hicks on his first day at a new school.
Gary K. Wolf had no idea he would make animation history when he wrote Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (1981). But Robert Zemeckis's Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) broke plenty of new technological ground in chronicling the efforts of 1940s Hollywood detective Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) to clear the name of a famous (and somewhat daffy) cartoon star who has been accused of murder. There was also plenty of innovation involved in Shawn Levy's 2006 adaptation of Croatian illustrator Milan Trenc's 1993 novel, Night At the Museum, which sees new security guard Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) discover the curse connected to the Golden Tablet of Pharaoh Ahkmenrah, which means that all of the exhibits in New York's American Museum of Natural History come alive each night. Despite the best efforts of a wax model of President Theodore Roosevelt (Robin Williams) things got no quieter in Levy's Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) and Night At the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014).
Francesca Simon and Tony Ross have written 25 books about Horrid Henry since 1994 and fans of the long-running animated CITV series (2006-) were delighted to see Nick Moore direct Horrid Henry: The Movie (2011), which starred Theo Stevenson in the title role, as he and Moody Margaret (Scarlett Stitt) torment teachers Miss Battle-Axe (Anjelica Huston) and Miss Lovely (Parminder Nagra), as well as Ashton Primary headmistress Miss Oddbod (Rebecca Front) and Vic Van Winkle (Richard E. Grant), the headmaster of bitter rivals, Brick House School. Penned by Daniel Handler under the nom de plume Lemony Snicket, the 13 novels in the series entitled A Series of Unfortunate Events (1999-2006) has only prompted one movie to date, Brad Silberling's Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), which compressed the action of the first three books to show how the three Baudelaire children are placed in the care of Aunt Josephine Anwhistle (Meryl Streep), who is unaware that fiendish stage actor Count Olaf (Jim Carrey) is after the fortune they inherited after their parents perished in a mysterious fire.
The ink was barely dry when Danny Boyle snapped up Frank Cottrell Boyce's Millions (2004), which centres on Catholic schoolboy Damian (Alex Etel) and older brother Anthony (Lewis Owen McGibbon), as they wonder what to do with a suitcase full of money that drops into their lap in the run-up to the Pound being replaced by the Euro. Three years later, Jeff Kinney published the first book about the misadventures of Greg Heffley, who was first played on screen by Zachary Gordon in Thor Freudenthal's Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010). He reprised the role in David Bowers's Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (2011) and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (2012) before handing it on to Jason Drucker in the same director's Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul (2017).
Kid Lit Grows Up
Although many of the books and films discussed in this overview had lessons to teach those who read and watched them, the emphasis was primarily on entertainment and escapism. The genre known as Young Adult Fiction prefers to address social issues head-on so that readers aged between 12-18 acquire a better understanding of the world in which they live. A number of the titles already mentioned could easily come under the YA banner, but the term has only been in use since the 1960s.
One of the most influential books of this kind, JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye (1951), has never been filmed, even though its protagonist, Holden Caulfield, became an icon of teenage angst and rebellion. Directors ranging from Billy Wilder to Steven Spielberg have tried to buy the rights, along with such actors as Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson and Leonardo DiCaprio. But it remains out of reach. By contrast, Harper Lee agreed to let Robert Mulligan adapt To Kill a Mockingbird, her 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning study of race relations in a small Alabama town, which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Gregory Peck, who plays Atticus Finch, the lawyer who defends a black man named Tom Robinson (Brock Peters) when he is accused of raping white girl, Mayella Ewell (Collin Wilcox).
Beverly Cleary had been writing the Ramona series (1950-99) for a decade by the time that Lee finished her masterpiece. But there's a very modish feel to Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum's Ramona and Beezus (2010), which teams Selena Gomez and Joey King as the sisters trying to survive both their father losing his job and a visit from their eccentric Aunt Bea (Ginnifer Goodwin). Remarkably Susan Eloise Hinton started writing The Outsiders when she was 15 and she was only 18 when her story about the rivalry in mid-60s Tulsa, Oklahoma between the Greasers and the Socs was published in 1967. A librarian persuaded Francis Ford Coppola to adapt the novel in 1983, with a stellar cast of up-and-coming stars taking the key roles of Ponyboy Curtis (C. Thomas Howell), Dally Winston (Matt Dillon), Johnny Cade (Ralph Macchio), Darry Curtis (Patrick Swayze), Sodapop Curtis (Rob Lowe), Two-Bit Matthews (Emilio Estevez) and Steve Randle (Tom Cruise).
A generation of British schoolchildren got to know Barry Hines's A Kestrel For a Knave (1968) by having to study it for their O Level English Literature exam. Most will remember Brian Glover's hilarious games lesson from Ken Loach's Kes (1969), but David Bradley's performance as the put-upon Billy Casper ensures that the poignant finale is laced with plenty of grit. The tone is considerably lighter in Judith Viorst's 1972 tome, which was adapted by Miguel Arteta for Disney's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014), which stars Ed Oxenbould as the 11 year-old having the worst birthday ever.
Natalie Babbitt's 1975 novel, Tuck Everlasting, has been twice reworked for the screen, by Frederick King Keller in 1981, and Jay Russell in Disney's 2002 version, which sees 15 year-old Alexis Bledel encounter a forest family after she runs away to avoid having to go to boarding school.
Sharon Stone heads the cast in The Mighty (1998), Peter Chelsom's take on Rodman Philbrick's Freak the Mighty (1993). But the stars are Kieran Culkin, as the 13 year-old battling Morquio Syndrome, and Elden Hanson, as the new best friend who teaches him the value and power of teamwork. Louis Sachar's Holes (1998) was filmed in 2003 by Andrew Davis with Shia LaBeouf in the role of Stanley Yelnats IV, whose streak of bad luck leads to him being sent to the Camp Green Lake juvenile detention centre after being wrongly charged with stealing a pair of sneakers. However, Warden Louise Walker (Sigourney Weaver) has plenty of work for idle hands, as she orders the juvenile residents to dig holes across the desert.
Sarah Sugarman's adaptation of Dyan Sheldon's Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (1999) cast Lindsay Lohan as Lola Steppe, who becomes convinced that her chances of becoming a Broadway star have gone forever when her family moves to New Jersey. Stephen Chbosky is unique in being both the author of the 1999 epistolary novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and the director of the unflinching film adaptation, which is set in the early 1990s and focuses on the friendship that develops between the clinically depressed Charlie Kelmeckis (Logan Lerman) and high school senior Sam (Emma Watson) and her stepbrother, Patrick (Ezra Miller).
A young Anne Hathaway will doubtlessly have fond memories of the two films spun off from Meg Cabot's The Princess Diaries series (2000-09), as they helped make her a star. In Garry Marshall's The Princess Diaries (2001), gawky schoolgirl Mia Thermopolis (Hathaway) has to get used to the idea that she is the heir to the throne of Genovia, while she relies more heavily on reining grandmother, Clarisse Renaldi (Julie Andrews), as Mia debates whether Nicholas Devereux (Chris Pine) is good consort material in The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004).
Drawing on Megan McDonald's Judy Moody and Stink series (2000-10) (series), John Schultz's Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer (2011) shows what happens when Judy Moody (Jordana Beatty) refuses to let either her pesky younger brother, Stink (Parris Mosteller), or guardian Aunt Opal (Heather Graham) spoil her plans for an exciting summer break.
Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now (2003) was adapted by Kevin Macdonald in 2013, with Saoirse Ronan playing Daisy, the American teenager who comes to stay with cousins Edmond (George MacKay), Isaac (Tom Holland) and Piper (Harley Bird) in the English countryside just as terrorists detonate a nuclear device in London. The New York music scene provides the backdrop for Rachel Cohn and David Levithan's Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008), which was filmed by Peter Sollett to show how bass player Nick O'Leary (Michael Cera) and classmate Norah Silverberg (Kat Dennings) set aside their mutual antipathy to track down the venue where cult band Where's Fluffy? are due to play.
Sandy Tung's Alice Upside Down (2007) derived from Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Alice series (1985-2013), which ran to 25 novels and three prequels. The film version centres around 11 year-old Alice McKinley (Alyson Stoner), who moves to a new house with her father, Ben (Luke Perry), and younger brother, Lester (Lucas Grabeel), and finds herself saddled with the seemingly strict and uncaring form teacher, Mrs Plotkin (Penny Marshall). Louise Rennison's 1999 book, Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging was adapted by Gurinder Chadha as Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (2008), with Georgia Groome playing Georgia Nicolson, the 14 year-old who is ashamed of her parents and a proud member of the Ace Gang at school, and who is also determined to make new classmate Robbie Jennings (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) fall in love with her.
No stranger to juvenile rites of passage after making such a wonderful job of Stephen King's Stand By Me (1986), Rob Reiner captures the poignant quirkiness of the burgeoning romance between second-graders Madeleine Carroll and Callum McAuliffe in his 2010 adaptation of Wendelin Van Draanen's Flipped (2001). Ann Brashares's The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2001) has a pair of jeans at its centre and they are passed between four friends from Bethesda, Maryland in Ken Kwapis's The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005), as Tabitha Tomko-Rollins (Amber Tamblyn), Lena Kaligaris (Alexis Bledel), Carmen Lowell (America Ferrera) and Bridget Vreeland (Blake Lively) endure their first summer apart. And the cast reunited for another second-hand roundelay in Sanaa Hamri's The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (2008).
Alice Hoffman's Aquamarine (2001) was adapted by Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum, with Sara Paxton playing the eponymous mermaid trying to make sure that best friends Emma Roberts and Joanna 'JoJo' Levesque aren't spending their last summer together. Ned Vizzini's It's Kind of a Funny Story (2006) inspired co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck to cast Keir Gilchrist as stressed teenager Craig Gilner, who checks into a psychiatric unit after contemplating a leap from Brooklyn Bridge and discovers a reason to live through his friendships with the self-harming Noelle (Emma Roberts) and Bobby (Zach Galifianakis), a grown-up drifter who claims to be on vacation.
A variation on the Beauty and the Beast story, Alex Flinn's Beastly (2007) was filmed by Daniel Barnz in 2011 with Alex Pettyfer as the teenager transformed by witch Mary-Kate Olsen, only to find redemption with classmate Vanessa Hudgens. Gayle Forman's If I Stay (2009) was adapted by RJ Culter, who cast Chloë Grace Moretz as Mia Hall, a musical prodigy whose hopes of attending the prestigious Juilliard School are threatened by a car crash while en route to her grandparents' farm.
Peter Howitt turned Danielle Joseph's Shrinking Violet (2009) into Radio Rebel (2012), which stars Debby Ryan as Tara Adams, the painfully shy schoolgirl who finds her voice when podcasting in her bedroom. Kody Keplinger's The DUFF (2010) was brought to the screen by Ari Sandel and stars Mae Whitman as the Atlanta high schooler who learns that mean girl Bella Thorne has branded her 'the Designated Ugly Fat Friend' of popular classmates Bianca Santos and Skyler Samuels.
Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort headline Josh Boone's take on John Green's The Fault in Our Stars (2012), which takes its title from William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and centres on the friendship between teenage cancer patients Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters. The valuable lessons contained in Jesse Andrews's Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2012) were capably translated to the screen by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, as 18 year-old Pittsburgh slacker Greg Gaines (Thomas Mann) and his buddy Earl (RJ Cyler) try to cheer up Rachel Kushner (Olivia Cooke), a classmate at Schenley High School, after she is diagnosed with leukaemia.
Jeanne Ryan's Nerve (2012) cashed in on the gaming craze and Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman's 2016 film version sees Venus Delmonico (Emma Roberts) accept a dare to get involved in an online game that requires her to take ever-more reckless risks. One of the few coming out novels to reach the screen, Becky Albertalli's Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda (2015) was filmed in the classic John Hughes manner by Greg Berlanti as Love, Simon (2018), which sees closeted Augusta student Simon Spier (Nick Robinson) juggle an anonymous online romance with the threat of being outed by a blackmailer.
Being an outsider is also the theme of Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give (2017), which was poignantly adapted by George Tillman, Jr. the following year to examine racial tensions in the United States through the eyes of Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg), who lives in the black neighbourhood of Garden Heights, but attends the exclusive and largely white private school. Williamson Prep. Her cosy view of the world is transformed, however, when she witnesses a cop shoot and kill her best friend, Khalil (Algee Smith) after he is flagged down for a minor traffic violation.
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