My absolute favorite author is Dianna Wynne Jones. She has a variety of books and worlds she’s written. I will happily read any of her books over and over again. So when I found out Howl’s Moving Castle had been made into a movie I knew it was going to become a book and a movie night for us. The kids may not have had as much fun with Howl’s Moving Castle as I did, but I was happy as a clam reading/watching the book/movie.
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Howl’s Moving Castle*
Sophie is the oldest sister, and when her two younger sisters head out into the world to make their own way it falls to Sophie to keep their hat shop open, and she’s good at it. She makes amazing hats, which drew the attention of the Witch of the Waste. The Witch of the Waste didn’t want the competition, so cursed Sophie. That leaves Sophie with only one option, she needs to find Howl and his magical moving castle. Maybe then Sophie will be able to break the curse.
As per usual, Howl’s Moving Castle the movie takes most of the book ideas and changes it. In the movie their country is at war and Howl is helping solve all of this. Or something, it’s a little muddled in my head now. I liked the movie even with the changes, that’s the important thing (though if you’re not a big fan of anime style don’t watch this).
Howl’s Moving Castle snacks
There’s a lot of things we were able to use for our movie night snacks for Howl’s Moving Castle. The kids had a lot of fun decorating and putting it all together.
- Mary’s cakes, Sophie’s sister was famous for her cakes, so of course we had to make some
- Sophie’s Hats, the kids had a blast designing lots of different hats out of sugar cookies, frosting and mini marshmallows* and random bits of food dye* and sprinkles*
- fire (for one of the characters), also known as Cheetos*
- shooting stars (a big plot point in the book and movie) sugar cookies with frosting and sprinkles
- liquid fire (also known as orange juice)
- logs (hostess hohos*)
- bread, bacon, cheese, and scrambled eggs (be careful Sophie is a bad cook, which worked well with the cheese sample pack we tried which we didn’t like two of the three flavors)
- more logs (pretzel sticks*) you have to keep Calcifer’s fire going
- milk with flavor to mix in for Howl’s various tonics and shower gels, we had chocolate*, strawberry*, and butterscotch* (wow! that price is crazy!)
I’ve got all of the books made into movies together as bookmarks if you’d like them for free to subscribers of my email list.
More 5th-grade book and a movie combos
My daughter loved this book and its sequels, she read it this summer. Then she got to watch a movie in a summer camp and was commenting to me how different it was from the book. I didn’t experience either (except in retelling), so I cannot judge.
The movie is VERY different, it keeps to the idea of the book, but it really changes a lot.