Books Go to the Movies
'The Polar Express' and 'Charlotte's Web' are coming to a theater near you
Walter Minkel -- School Library Journal, 7/1/2004
Bibliophiles are having a field day at the movies. In the current release The Day After Tomorrow, starring Dennis Quaid, survivors of a new Ice Age seek refuge in the New York Public Library's famous Research Library—the one with the lions. Librarians, however, were horrified when they saw how the characters kept warm—by burning books. "Logically, they should have burned the furniture... but did they ask a librarian?" Linda Gottman, a librarian at Edgewood Academy in San Antonio, TX, asked members of an online discussion group. "I mean, if they had wanted to burn paper, I have tons of memos, faculty handbooks, and scraps of paper on my desk."
In other movie news, E. B. White's Charlotte's Web (HarperCollins, 1952), which was released as an animated film in 1973, will be remade. The new version will combine live action and animation and be directed by Gary Winick, who directed this spring's teen comedy 13 Going on 30. Charlotte's Web will be released in 2006.
Chris Van Allsburg's classic picture book, The Polar Express (Houghton, 1985), is about to be released as a computer-animated feature film. The movie is directed by Robert Zemeckis and narrated by Tom Hanks, the pair that created the popular films Forrest Gump and Cast Away. The Polar Express is scheduled to chug into theaters November 19.
