Imagination and Innovation: the Story of Weston Woods by John Cech, Scholastic Press, 2009. 175 pp.
The title says this is the story of Weston Woods, the company, but the company's history is so closely bound to its visionary founder, Morton Schindel, that it is really more a biography of him.
Mr. Schindel started Weston Woods in 1953 and almost singlehandedly invented the industry of films based on children's books. Mort Schindel developed an interest in children's books as he read them to his young children. He explored film as a hobby when he was recuperating from tuberculosis as a young man. He then went on to turn the intersection of the two into an empire and a life-long crusade.
Weston Woods got its first big break on the Captain Kangaroo Show and has continued to follow a creative vision that could be described as the anti-Disney. Weston Woods tries to capture the spirit of the original children's book and use the artist's original drawings in their film. Their films have largely been directed at the educational and library markets, not at the home market.
This book gives us an inside view of the technical problems that were faced over the years by the people trying to adapt children's books into films. We meet many famous authors and illustrators as their books are turned into film. We see the many creative ways that film was used in education over the past half century to attempt to connect children with books. We come to understand the constant day-to-day struggle to balance the needs of a business to make a profit and a group of artists to create work using a very high standard of excellence.
Weston Woods was acquired by Scholastic in 1996 but Mort Schindel is still active in guiding the company and, in our increasingly multimedia world, Weston Woods will continue to be an important part of children's books.
Reviewed by Bob Sibert
