As the film credits rolled, we sat silent for a while before leaving the theater. My oldest daughter gave me a look of disbelief as she asked if that was really how some white people treated black people back then. I assured her that in some cases it was all that and worse. She shook her head in anger: “That’s just . . . so . . . wrong.”

With the exception of, say, Julie and Julia, books are generally better than the movies based on them, right? It’s almost impossible to capture the entire essence of the printed word in two hours or less.

Earlier this week, my family was invited to a screening of The Help, and having read the book earlier this year, I had high hopes for the movie but a nagging fear that it would not live up to my expectations.

As it turns out, The Help was no different from most book-to-movie adaptations in that some things were left out, but those missing pieces did not diminish the stirring, heartbreaking, yet hopeful story of domestic life that took place during the 1960s civil rights struggle in Mississippi. (Warning: The film does contain a lot of vulgar language.)

Raised in our modern day culture, my kids are vaguely aware of the notion of racial tension, but they have never been personally confronted with it. Although my girls have an understanding of the history behind the issue—we’ve read books together like Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, and biographies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks—they have very little firsthand experience with the emotion attached to the issue or the hatred involved, and thus have a hard time understanding it as a concept.

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Megan writes for God’s World News, is a director for Classical Conversations, and is a confessed “blogaholic” residing at Half-Pint House. She, her husband, and four homeschooled daughters live in the St. Louis area.

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