Children's Books: Turning Kids' Fantasies into Movies

"Mars Needs Moms," the 3D animated movie based on Berkeley Breathed's book of the same name, premiered in March.

For many years, movie adaptations of children's books have been a popular way to make movies for young people. Perhaps the most popular movie adaptations have been the animated kind. These range from classics such as "Sleeping Beauty," "Pinocchio," and "Cinderella" to more modern treatments like "Tangled," and "The Princess and the Frog."

Success of Contemporary Animated Movies

Adapting literary pieces into animated movies works is so successful, in part, because there is already a considerable market they can tap for such projects. And retelling classics to fit the modern times also allows producers and filmmakers to exercise their creative licenses, while audiences become curious about how such written masterpieces will be presented on the big screen.

While there are many mediocre attempts that didn't make it big at the box office, there are still a number of successful animated movies coming from children's books that became critical and blockbuster triumphs. Current examples of these films include "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" and "How to Train Your Dragon." These works are part of the ever-expanding list of award-winning animated works originating from children's books.

Combining Live Action and Animation

Whether they are movies from household names in children's literature like The Brothers Grimm and Beatrix Potter, or more contemporary writers like William Steig, Neil Gaiman, Cressida Cowell, Kathryn Lasky, or Ron Barrett, a number of filmmakers have successfully used a combination of live action and animation to come up with movies like "James and the Giant Peach," "Charlotte's Web," and "Stuart Little."

2D, Stop-Motion, and 3D

Through the years, animated films have evolved in look, feel, treatment, and technical needs. Animated works of yesteryear employed the use of hand-drawn images to produce a movie. After the many decades of using processes like rotoscoping and cel animation, the dawn of digital technology also opened new possibilities for the production of computer-animated movies.

After renowned 2D works like "Beauty and the Beast, "The Iron Giant," and "Curious George," many filmmakers also started to explore the use of photorealistic and 3D imagery in their animation projects. Children's tales that benefited from this include "Shrek" and "Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who." Stop-motion works like "Fantastic Mr. Fox" and "Coraline" became hits hailed by both critics and the general public.