SETTING: New York, USA
WIKI: link
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: A-
FROM PUBLISHER: This is the incredible story of Rhoda Penmark, a charming and delightful eight-year-old. There is only one thing disturbing about Rhoda. She has developed an extraordinary moral code - and would think nothing of killing you if you had something she wanted...
MY THOUGHTS: I really enjoyed this. Rhoda has brown hair, light brown eyes, and a gap between her front teeth. She's got no conscience to speak of and will do what she feels she has to to get what she wants. I wish she had been more discrete at at times with her evil deeds but then I have to remember she's only eight years old. She's got everyone fooled into thinking she's your average well-behaved good school student who does no wrong.
There were a few long scenes where Rhoda's mother Christine explored her own background. I felt it dragged the story down a bit and thought it was unnecessary to the plot line. The story was interesting enough without adding that over the top nonsense. The could have left that stuff out and they would have had time to investigate a child's death, since he had oddly shaped bruises on himself.
What I like about Christine is that she knows what her daughter's done, she's knows it's wrong, and is very conflicted about what to do. Does she tell the police and her husband all she knows or does she keep Rhoda's secrets? At times she's in a bit of denial but she's always able to see the truth. She'd write her husband letters telling him all that's going on and tells him about her suspicions about Rhoda but she never mails the letters.
Leroy, the maintenance man, was one annoying character. What adult taunts a child repeatedly like that? He got what he had coming. I feel like his character is supposed to be black though it's never said that he is. An Amazon reviewer has said the same thing.
Another slightly annoying character was their neighbor, Monica Breedlove, who never seemed to stop talking. There were also three Fern sisters who ran the school Rhoda went to. It just wasn't necessary to have all three characters when one would have sufficed.
The ending was good and bad at the same time. I never would have expected what happened to have happened. Christine took drastic measures to keep Rhoda's secret. I'm not surprised that it was left open for a sequel, one I'd have loved to have read but the author died from a second heart attack shortly after the book was published so a sequel wasn't to be.
Excellent article on the novel here.
1956 FILM- In the book, Christine's father died in WWII but he's alive and comes to visit her in the film.
In the book, Rhoda and family used to live in Baltimore, Maryland but in the film they changed it to Wichita, Kansas.
Rhoda has brown hair and brown eyes in the novel. In the film she's got blonde hair and blue eyes. One of the later book covers has her with blonde hair too.
Almost everyone played their part well, especially Nancy Kelly, who played Rhoda's mother, Christine. Patty McCormack, the girl who played Rhoda, was eleven years old at the time and was way too mature to play the part of an eight year old and didn't even look like an eight year old, despite the braids. I don't think she played the part well because she seemed to be overacting most of the time. There was a scene where her mother was questioning her about someone's death and Rhoda got really angry and that was the first time she seemed genuine.
There's a scene in the book where Christine sees Rhoda take some matches from inside the house. In the film not only does Christine see her take them, she asks her what she's going to do with them.
Christine never wrote letters to her husband in the film like she did in the novel.
It was left out of the film completely the part where Rhoda killed a dog when she was seven years old when they lived in Baltimore over a year before.
The film used a lot of the exact dialogue from the book.
In the book Rhoda was given a fluid-filled pendant with opals in it when an old neighbor died and left it to her. In the film they changed it to a crystal ball with a fish in it that resembled a snow globe.
We didn't get to hear Christine's thought process when deciding on what to do with the situation with Rhoda at the very end of film, though it had a similar ending as the novel. Instead, after Rhoda went to bed her mother stood over her telling her what was about to happen.
I absolutely love the part near the end where Kenneth is reading Rhoda a story in bed and Rhoda tells him that Monica Breedlove is going to leave her lovebird to Rhoda when she dies and her father says that Monica's not going to die anytime soon. That's not in the book.
The very end of the film is completely different and better than that of the novel and blows it out of the water, it's so good.
This is what the end of the film says, "You have just seen a motion picture which dares to be startlingly different. May we ask that you do not divulge the unusual climax of the story. Thank you."
1985 FILM- The book was made into an NBC made-for-television film. It's 100 minutes long. I haven't seen it but have heard it's no good. They say Patty McCormick was offered the role of Monica Breedlove but after reading the script, she turned it down.
There's an unofficial low budget 1995 sequel to this called Mommy.
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