The Indian in the Cupboard Book VS Movie

The Indian in the Cupboard, written by Lynne Reid Banks, was one of my favorite books, and series as I was growing up.  When the movie came out, I was even more excited!  In this book, Omri is having a birthday and recieves an old cupboard from his brother and a plastic toy indian from his friend Patrick.  Omri decides to play with the cupboard and asks his mother for a key to lock the cupboard.  Omri puts the plastic indian in the cupboard before bed and locks it.  During the night something magical happens.  Omri awakes to strange noises coming from the cupboard. When he peers in the cupboard he finds a real life indian!  Omri as brought to life his plastic toy indian, an Iroquois brave, Little Bear.  Little Bear and Omri find themselves in several sticky situations, such as bringing to life other plastic figures and animals.  Things get even more interesting when Omri tells his best friend Patrick about his secret.  When Patrick finds out about it, he decides he wants a little person all for himself, and brings to life a cowboy, Boone.  I love to read and I usually enjoy the movies, but often find that the movies lack the detail that books have.  The movie, however, brought the characters to life for me, becdause I was able to have something visual to see.  The movie was just as good as the book even though many of the scenes and dialogue were very different from the book. I also found that Little Bear was different in the movie from the way he was described in the book.  My fifth grade students read this book and we watched the movie together.  We charted the differences and similarities.