The Worst Movie Ever

My mother instilled a love of reading in Scott, Amy, and me. She said she read to us all the time when we were babies. And the first day of summer, she would take us to the main library, not the tiny branch by our house, to pick out library books to read. Learning didn’t stop with us just because the school year ended.

When Ella was a baby, we read to her all the time. Heck, we read to her when Michelle was pregnant. I was pretty sure she couldn’t follow the plot of the latest Jack Reacher novel, but I read it to her anyway. Actually, as impressed with her intellect as I am, she may very well have been following along despite being a fetus, but I digress.

Ella’s love of a good story is part of the reason that bedtime is always a struggle with her. She never wants to go to sleep. She always wants to hear one more story on Alexa or listen to one more chapter of the book I am reading to her.

Most nights, I walk by her room around 9:00, and I can see that her little reading light is still on. Instead of getting mad, a warm smile covers my face because I know the feeling of not being able to put a book down. If I have done anything right in raising this little girl, I have given her the same gift my mom gave me.

She stayed up late many nights the last few weeks because she could not stop reading the third Harry Potter book, The Prisoner of Azkaban. We have started reading the Harry Potter books and then watching the movie after Ella finishes the book. She was so excited because family movie night was Friday, and she only had one chapter left in the book. So, after she got home from school, she immediately grabbed the book and finished the last chapter. Then, we ordered pizza and began to watch The Prisoner of Azkaban. Ella did not realize that she was about to learn a valuable truth: the book is always better than the movie.

“What? That’s it? The movie can’t be over,” she said as the ending credits began to roll. “They didn’t show that Gryffindor won the Quidditch Cup. Why did they leave that out?

We explained to her that movies have to cut out parts of the book to shrink them down to a digestible two hours.

“But they left out the good parts. That is the worst movie ever.”

I completely ruined a really good movie for my daughter. And I’m completely happy about that.