by Jamie Elizabeth

Created on: March 31, 2009   Last Updated: December 28, 2009

Books are nearly always superior to the movie versions made of them. The superiority of books stems from the way in which they require the use of the wonderful human experience of imagination. While movies can certainly stimulate the imagination and help to either cement or dispel one's ideas, books do so much more for the imagination, and do so more effectively.

In reading the words and in being forced to create your own image from the author's words an actual dialogue is created in what the author has written and in what you pull from that. An author's description of the way a person looks, the expanse of a landscape, or the sound of a voice will be created differently in the minds of different people.

The way that these images and ideas are created is largely based, as is anything, on the individual experiences and interests of the reader. In a movie, your imagination is not needed, and the visual image that accompanies the story is provided for you and the visual impact of the story is not based in any way on your own personal experience. The experience of creating one's own visual image and using your imagination, especially in instances where fantasy literature is concerned, can help you to learn and to get things out of the book that you might not otherwise.

For example, in the Harry Potter book series by JK Rowling, which have been made into very successful movies, aspects of the world Rowling creates are much better left to the imagination. In the books Hogwarts Castle is described with detail but not so much that an exact floor-plan is laid out, or even so much that you have an exact picture painted of its outside walls. However, Rowling gives you enough detail and leaves just enough out to allow the reader to imagine Hogwarts and the wizarding world so that they make escape into the book.  Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the rest of the gang are roaming around a vision of Hogwarts in which the reader may like to reside or attend school in and not merely a Hogwarts that is personalized for its ability to best be modeled and sold as a toy based on the descriptions of movie producers.

The ability to personalize and to have a dialogue with books is part of their importance. It allows human logic and creativity to be used, and for people to grow as they read. It is an aspect of the human experience that cannot be reached by simply watching someone else's vision. It is this intense interaction between the reader and the words that ensures that movie versions will never live up to the original strength of the written book.  

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