Lisa Wiley

I'm less than a half hour into this movie, and I want to turn it off. As a fourth grade teacher who uses this book as a read aloud with my students to teach and model reading and writing skills, this movie does the book absolutely no justice. Most of the exposition of the plot from the book is missing from this movie. How are you going to recreate this story into a movie and leave out the symbolism of the overstuffed suitcase to symbolize Rob's suppressed feelings and emotions, the gloomy weather to indicate the mood/tone, his father slapping him at his mother's funeral, etc.? That right there was the event that triggered Rob not ever showing any emotions. So disappointed.