My kids and I had a very funny discussion about whether we preferred the book or a movie made of the book. We happened to be watching The Hunger Games. I had read all three of the Hunger Games books a few months ago but I hadn’t seen any of the movies yet. My middle son, Bryce, said it was one of his favorite books. He even wrote about it in school. So, I asked him whether he preferred the book or the movie. He and McKinley, my youngest son, were both vehement about preferring the movie.

I usually prefer the book because the movie can never live up to what is in my head – it can’t; fundamentally, it is someone else’s vision of the book. A few books come to mind when thinking about an amazing book that someone has tried to make and come up with something different than what I had envisioned: Atonement, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Clockwork Orange, the Harry Potter series, Bridges of Madison County, Cool Hand Luke, The Help, Gone With the Wind, and many others.

Just because the movie is different than what I had in mind doesn’t make it a bad movie, it’s just different than what I had in mind. I went into watching The Hunger Games prepared to dislike it. I was pleasantly surprised and discovered that I did like the movie. It wasn’t quite like the book in many respects, but I liked it on its own merit.

The boys had several other reasons for preferring the movie version: “It doesn’t take you a month to read it.” “You don’t have to read.” “You don’t have to work so hard.” “It’s way more entertaining!” On the plus side for the book, McKinley did say about the movie version, “I don’t like that it cuts out half of the book.”

For The Hunger Games in particular, I liked that it conveyed some difficult concepts that were explained in minute detail in the book, with mostly thoughts. The movie did have a lot of staring and “blank” looks instead of the descriptiveness that comes with a book.

What do you prefer – the movie or the book? And why?