15 greatest movies based on children's books

Dreamworks Animation adapted Cressida Cowell's children's book in 2010, voice casting Jay Baruchel as protagonist Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, a young viking living in the shadow of his chieftain father (played by Gerard Butler) who finds inner courage after befriending and becoming the trainer of a very rare dragon. The "How To Train Your Dragon" series contains 12 books, something Dreamworks is already taking advantage of – there are currently two movies in the franchise, an animated series that connects the first two movies, and a third installment is slated to come out sometime in 2019.  

Everything about this 1971 movie adaptation of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Gene Wilder as Willie Wonka (a performance so iconic it became a meme), the music ("Pure Imagination" and "The Candy Man"), the Edward Gorey-like humor of kids dying in macabre fashion, and the fact that it may or may not be a retelling of Dante's Inferno, to name just a few. And before you ask, the 2005 Tim Burton remake is an abomination that should be stricken from the record.

Leave it to director Wes Anderson to make a wonderful stop motion film adaptation of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox. It makes sense. The director's penchant for earnestness and his cutesy/twee visual aesthetic lend themselves well to making a movie about a thieving fox set straight by a marriage and family. 

Like the aforementioned Anderson, Spike Jonze's talents were perfectly suited to make the live action film adaptation Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, one of the most beloved children's books to ever be written and illustrated. Jonze is a master of creating magical worlds – whether they be somewhat twisted like in "Being John Malkovich," or futuristic and familiar like in "Her"  – and this 2009 movie is no exception.

Yes, another Roald Dahl movie, but how could you not like the 1996 film adaptation of Matilda? Director Danny DeVito did a phenomenal job at casting this sweet story of a young genius girl with telekinesis who loves nothing more than learning to life – he and real wife Rhea Perlman played Harry and Zinnia Wormwood, Matlida's obnoxious and boorish parents. 

Though the 2009 computer-animated movie has very little to do with the 1978 children's picture book made by Judi and Ron Barrett other than they're both about worlds where foods falling from the sky is a common meteorological occurrence, the movie adaptation of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs was an instant classic thanks in large part to the wonderful slapsticky script, the cast – Bill Hader doing a children's movie, enough said – and the great directing efforts of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the adaptation masters that also gave us the "Lego Movie" and the "21 Jump Street "reboot movies. 

Easily one of the best children's live action movies of the 1990s, "Jumanji" takes the classic Chris Van Allsburg book and builds a backstory to it. In the movie, Robin Williams plays Alan Parrish, a now grown man who's been trapped inside the game for 20-some years and is unleashed back into the real world only when siblings Judy and Peter Shepherd find the game decades later. A sequel starring Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, and Jack Black came out near the end of last year and has been dominating box offices worldwide ever since.

The 1964 Disney technicolor musical starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke about a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious nanny that can fly was based on a series of books written P.L. Travers – there are eight of them, though the last three were written after the movie came out. This Christmas, Disney will release a  long awaited sequel, featuring Emily Blunt and national treasure Lin-Manuel Miranda.

E.B. White's classic children's book about a pig and his friend spider – it's the best-selling children's paperback of all time, according to Publisher's Weekly – was made into a movie twice. The first time was in 1973 by the iconic animation studio Hanna-Barbera, and in 2006 it was made into a live action film with an all-star cast that included a Dakota Fanning, Julia Roberts Steve Buscemi, Oprah Winfrey, and Robert Redford.

Disney's 1942 animated classic about a young doe deer becoming a young buck is based on Bambi, a Life in the Woods, a 1923 Austrian novel written by Felix Salten and translated for the United States by publisher Simon & Schuster. The film was originally panned for being too realistic, but soon became a classic worthy of being added to the National Film Registry.

Brad Bird's directorial debut – he also made "The Incredibles," "Ratatouille" and "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol," weirdly –  about a boy and his alien robot (voiced by Vin Diesel) was based on The Iron Man: A Children's Story in Five Nights, written by Ted Hughes and published in 1968 to much acclaim. Fun fact: the title of the book was eventually changed to The Iron Giant so as to avoid confusion with the Marvel super hero.

One of the few Disney animated films that wasn't based on some classic/folkloric children's tale, The One Hundred and One Dalmatians, a story about a young couple who have their puppies kidnapped by Cruella de Vil (the best Disney villain ever, don't @ me), was adapted by a 1956 novel of the same name written by Dodie Smith.

Made by Japan's legendary Studio Ghibli and directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi (his mentor, Hayao Miyazaki, who's responsible for the studio's best films, wrote the screenplay), 2010's "The Secret World of Arrietty" is loosely based on The Borrowers, a children's book series published between the late 1950s and early 1980s about a tiny family that lives inside the walls of a British household, "borrowing" things from their much bigger human counterparts to survive.

The "Shrek" movies are so popular – it's the second highest grossing animated film franchise of all time, behind only to the "Despicable Me" series – that their success often obscures the fact that they're based on a children's book. William Steig's Shrek!, which came out in 1990 to some acclaim, is the source material that not gave us Mike Myer voicing an ornery ogre all the way to the bank, but also the internet's weirdest obsession. 

Y'all didn't think we'd make a list about the best movies based on children's books and not finish it off without mentioning the "Harry Potter" franchise, did you? What is there to say about Harry Potter that you don't already know? The books, all seven of them, were a publishing phenomenon. The movies were all box office blockbusters. There's even theme parks. I mean, come on.