Read before you stream - great kids books made into tv or movies

Read Before You Stream: Kids’ books made into tv and movies

August 30, 2023

School holidays are approaching – it’s a great opportunity to encourage reading. Kids love to watch movies and tv shows, so why not motivate more reading with book choices that have stream-able adaptations? Many great children’s books have been adapted as movies or as a tv series, just take your pick from this list! Happy reading and streaming.

Kids who can’t get enough of Super Mario Bros. will love this picture book based on the movie. Young readers can relive the excitement, adventure, and favourite moments from the film as they flip through the pages again and again.

Netflix adapted this five-book series into a television show. It’s about three teens who team up to solve hair-raising paranormal mysteries in London. These spooky novels are excellent to listen to on audio during road trips or on vacation.

Several of Kate DiCamillo’s beloved children’s novels, such as The Tale of Despereaux, Because of Winn Dixie, and Flora and Ulysses, have been adapted into films. The Magician’s Elephant is her latest novel to come to the screen, and the animated movie captures the magic and wonder that made the book a bestseller. It’s about a young boy whose search for his missing sister takes him on an unforgettable adventure.

If you read Wonder (loved this book!) and its movie adaptation will also want to read White Bird, which tells the story of Julian’s grandmother, before the big-screen adaptation arrives in theaters. It’s about a young Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied France and the family who took her in and kept her safe.

Before seeing Wonka at the movies, lolly lovers will want to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. This book contains both stories. Wonka is a prequel to the novels and gives viewers a glimpse into Willy Wonka’s early life when he met the Oompa-Loompas and created his candy empire.

They smell and look like bad guys…but are they? Get ready for laughs as you follow these bad guys doing good deeds. Can they turn it around and ditch their bad guy stereotypes?

Other Suggestions:

Primary age

Spiderwick Chronicles

The Iron Giant

The BFG

A Wrinkle in Time

The Lion, the Witch, the Wardrobe

Inkheart

The One and Only Ivan

The Borrowers

Tween and Teen Books Made Into Movies

Finally, here are great movies based on books for upper primary and high school. Enjoy this young adult fiction that helps older minds read, connect, and imagine.

The Maze Runner

The Book Thief

The Lightning Thief: Percy Jackson and the Olympians

The Fault in Our Stars

Enola Holmes

The City of Ember

The Hunger Games

Divergent

Journey to the Centre of the Earth

The Giver

We are incredibly passionate about improving kids’ literacy – research consistently supports the fact that confident readers achieve more highly than disengaged learners. We hope that you find these suggestions helpful in engaging students to read.

If we can get our children to enjoy reading they will grow into a reader, and that reader has more doors open to them in this world.

If you are wanting a resource that can boost your child’s or class’ literacy in 2023, please visit Literacy for Boys or Literacy for Kids

Literacy For Kids now available for schools

Our programs ~ Literacy for Boys and Literacy for Kids ~ have had a huge uptake with schools and homeschoolers this year. It reflects two things:

a) the need for quality reading material that engages students

b) a decline in reading skills over the past three years (COVID’s impact largely)

We are incredibly passionate about improving kids’ literacy – research consistently supports the fact that confident readers achieve more highly than disengaged learners.

If we can get our children to enjoy reading they will grow into a reader, and that reader has more doors open to them in this world.

If you are wanting a resource that can boost your child’s or class’ literacy in 2023, please visit Literacy for Boys or Literacy for Kids

Check out our appearance on Channel 7 News where we were asked for our comment on NAPLAN results ~

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