I took Liam to see the new Charlotte's Web movie this afternoon while Mark and Olivia finished up their Christmas shopping. Charlotte's Web was my favorite book for years, but I don't think Liam is old enough to listen to a chapter book quite yet. However, I have been reading him stories without pictures, so that he must imagine them all by himself. Our favorite book like this is The Little Big Book for Moms, which is filled with fairy tails and poems and, luckily, an excerpt from Charlotte's Web. After hearing that our five-year-old friend Isaac loved the book, I read the excerpt to Liam the other night. He loved it and asked for it again the next night. And the next.
So today we went to the movie. Remember, Charlotte's Web was my favorite book for a long time, so I had a lot of hope that Liam would love the story in movie form. It's two-hours long (breaking our rule of no-more-than-ninety-minutes-tops movies) and I forgot to have him pee before we sat down. I was pretty confident we wouldn't be seeing the whole thing.
Much to my surprise, Liam loved the movie. He sat quietly through the whole thing, save for a part near the end when he said to me (whisper-free), "Mommy, Charlotte's sick an she's gonna die." As for me, I loved the movie too. Although it took a bit to get over the initial spider-willies, I cried when Charlotte wrote "Some Pig," I cried when she spoke of her "magnum opus" and I bawled, yes bawled, when she died. Liam climbed on my lap for that part, although I'm not sure if it was because he was sad or just seriously worried about his mother. And then, since the credits run with a song by Sarah McLachlan (and her song in Toy Story 2 still makes me cry every damn time), I started all over again. Liam got up and danced.
Afterwords Liam told me Wilbur was his favorite but Charlotte was his favorite too and that he liked when she built webs. We picked up a new copy of the book on the way home.
Too funny...Sarah McLachlan gets me every time too. I have every CD, but I have to skip certain songs so that people don't think I'm nuts as I drive down the road bawling!
Posted by: Kristin | May 01, 2007 at 06:17 PM