Starting Again

New year and soon a new job and I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about both. The first book of the year is So Dear to My Heart by Sterling North. Disney made a really sappy movie about it once upon a time, but I had already read the book before I saw it and was very disappointed. The movie doesn't have all the intrigue and otherworldliness of the Cat Hollow folklore that you get in the book. Most of the background plot was ignored to focus on the cartoon farm animals and the kid playing Jeremiah was working really hard to make sappily cute faces. Disney sugarcoated over a lot of Granny's hellfire and brimstone and her fear of anything outside her own little patch of a farm. It skims over how miserable Jeremiah was too, with nothing of his own, not even the truth about his parents, and always the threat of Granny taking what he does have away. (first the calf, then the lamb, the trip to the fair, the story of who his parents were and what happened to them.) The book is better. It brings the tiny little town and all the ghosts and legends it holds to life. There is more history and mystery and darkness and light in the book. The movie's cute enough, in a forced way, and I know that it's Disney and intended for kids, but I read the book when I was in grade school and really enjoyed the more complex story. Cartoon lambs are cute and Burl Ives can sing a little ditty with the best of them, but they are nowhere near as interesting as lovers running into fires to save each other, and ghostly violin music played by a mute hermit, a tree growing from the grave of the woman Granny thought was a witch, and all kinds of old mountain lore. It's just better.