Books to Movies - What's in store for 2010

In 2010, there are a few books you might want to read before you see the movie later in the year.

For the adults, the book which is on my "to read" pile and which I will have to move up closer to the top, is Elizabeth Gilbert's, Eat, Pray, Love.  The film version is due to be released in October 2010.



In my Summer 2009/2010 edition of the Bookseller and Publisher magazine, some other books that may be adapted for the screen in 2010 are mentioned.  The Book Thief by Markus Zusak gets a mention, as does We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver (2005 Orange Prize winner).  The Book Thief is one of those books that you either loved or hated.  Personally I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure how well it will fit the big screen as much of my enjoyment was in the way it was written.  I found We Need to Talk about Kevin  very confronting when I read it a few years ago, as it challenges the premise that mothers are naturally maternal, and offers up the idea that violent children may just be born that way.  Online information implies that We Need to Talk about Kevin is more likely to be release early in 2011.  It will be interesting to see how they tackle some of the more confronting scenes from the book or whether they leave them out.

For the teenagers, the first of John Marsden's Tomorrow series,   Tomorrow, When the War Began,  has been adapted into a movie and is due out in September 2010.  My eldest son really enjoyed this series of books a couple of years ago, and so despite the books having been written in the early 1990's, they have stood the test of time.  Let's hope the movie lives up to it.  Something to recommend to your 12-14 year old to read.




For the kids:  The Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney is due to be released in time for the September school holidays and is based on a series of books aimed at upper primary/lower secondary level.  I read an interesting article on the Readings Books website regarding graphic books and children who have trouble reading, in this case a child with dyslexia.  The series was mentioned due to its use of underlining of some of the text as, apparently, this makes it easier for kids to read from left to right across the page.  I hadn't really thought deeply about how much the way the written word in a book is presented can affect the way our children engage with it.  It should be obvious I suppose, given how much my children like reading comic books such as Asterix and Garfield.