Friends of the Libraries' Guest Columnist Features Children's literature as film By Vicki Carter June 11, 2005 The Athens Messenger

You may have noticed lately that a lot of money is being spent to make children's books into films; the Lord of The Rings series, Spider Man, Bat Man, Harry Potter, The Polar Express. When I was asked my opinion of why so many children's books are being made into films, I curtly replied that, "Hollywood must be hurting for creative material, and they're obviously going to kid's classics for inspiration" Wrong! I was so naïve.

The correct answer is money! The fact is, kid's films make more money than any other genre of film. The films mentioned above are in the billion-dollar club; each earning in excess of one billion dollars.

Only a few films earn membership in the club, but the ones that do have very similar characteristics; they are based on children's literature, they feature a child or teen hero, they have a fairy-tale plot with a happy ending, they are rated PG-13, and they use conventional or digital animation. All the other films consistently lose money for the Hollywood studios. That is, they lose money at the box office. The studios aren't after record-breaking ticket sales, though a blockbuster once in awhile is nice. They make the films because the films are a direct pipeline between young audiences and the international world of movie paraphernalia; clothes, games, soundtracks, home videos, DVDs, magazines, books, toys, and even vacations.

Disney was the first Hollywood businessman to see the lucrative relationship between children and films. As early as the 1930s, Disney began work on his full-length animated cartoon, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves." It was the first film to have a merchandising tie-in.

This animated children's movie had multiple licensable characters. Snow While and all her dwarves were licensed to watchmakers, publishers, and to toy makers. Disney was a financial wizard. Disney knew then, as the other five film studios have come to realize some 70 years later, that their money comes from kids. Hollywood banks on the fact that children between the ages of 4 and 15 are a rich market. Hasbro, alone, expects to make $225 million this year selling Star Wars products.

Not only have the studios turned the world's youth into a gazillion dollar market, they also exert an insidious control over our children's minds. The ubiquitous tentacles of the media empires create today's popular culture. Author J. Epstein says that, "Taken together, the selection of images from Hollywood, both in movies and on television, creates a vision of how the world works: they publish most of the books read by children, they record most of the music listened to by children, and they license most of the characters whose image appear in toys, clothes, and games consumed by children."

It's bad enough that our children are targets form international corporate advertising, but to think that we allow Hollywood to shape their minds as well is frightening and irresponsible.

I wonder at times if parents have given over the raising of their children to technological nannies - the television or the computer.

According to Paul Kropp, author of "Raising a Reader," a growing body of research indicates that a child who watches more than three hours of TV a day will suffer problems in reading, at school, and in social development. A recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Children's Digital Media Centers, based on a survey of parents, found that kids in the 6 months to 6-year-old group spent twice as much time watching television as they did playing outdoors and three times as much time as they spend reading or being read to. The report further showed that children who live in a home where the TV is on most of the time will have trouble learning to read.

From what I see as a teacher in the public schools, our children are facing an epidemic of global proportions brought on by corporate greed. Our children are being seduced away from literature, reading, and thinking. It is our responsibility to fill their lives with books and more books.

Vicki Carter is a teacher in the Athens City Schools and is working on a Ph.D. in children's literature at Ohio University.