Film · Prime Video · 2008

Horton Hears a Who!

A person is a person, no matter how small. The sentence is the film. It holds.

Horton's line is older than the movie and the movie does not squander it. The speck is a city. The city is full of people who cannot make the large world hear them until one child shouts. The kangaroo wants order, safety, and no inconvenient lives. She is the villain, and she is a parent, which is the warning.

Faithful to the book in the only way that matters. A house should know this sentence by heart. The film is a fair way to learn it.

The eight

Industry
6/10
He carries the clover through weather and mockery. That is his job.
Household
7/10
A mayor and a son. Horton is a guardian.
Piety
5/10
A creed in one sentence, kept when it is costly.
Courage
9/10
He will be mauled rather than drop the speck.
Republic
7/10
A jungle public that prefers peace to a people it cannot see.
Temperance
7/10
The kangaroo's excess is safety without mercy.
Truth
9/10
The small voices are real. Denying them is the lie.
Stewardship
9/10
The entire plot is stewardship of lives you could step on.

Live historicallyDefend one small person whose voice the room has decided not to hear.

Film · Prime Video · 2006

Charlotte's Web

Friendship, a farm, and a death that is not a betrayal. One of the true ones.

Wilbur is a spring pig, which means he is scheduled to die, and Charlotte spends her silk to stop it. She succeeds. She also dies, because that is what spiders do, and the film does not cheat this into a reunion. Fern grows up and starts to look away from the barn, which is also true, and also a grief.

E. B. White's story is one of the few that trusts a child with mortality without using it as a thrill. Watch this version for that trust. The famous words in the web are not marketing. They are a friend spending her life.

The eight

Industry
7/10
A farm with chores, a fair, a spider's actual craft.
Household
8/10
Fern, a pig, a barn household. Growing up pulls her toward the boy and away from the pen.
Piety
5/10
No sermon. A created order in which things die.
Courage
8/10
Charlotte works until she is done. Wilbur keeps the egg sac.
Republic
6/10
A fair, a farm, a community that will kill a pig without malice.
Temperance
7/10
Appetite is the farmer's calendar. Friendship interrupts it once.
Truth
9/10
Death is not softened into a nap.
Stewardship
9/10
She saves him and leaves him her children. That is the whole charge.

Live historicallyTell a child the truth about a good thing that does not last, and do not rush past it.