How well did the movie stay true to the book?

   By: Rachel Perkins

    For my book four project I wanted to read My Sisters Keeper and compare it to the movie. This tear jerking book was about Anna, a 13 year old girl wanting to sue her parents for the right of her own body. All of Anna's life she knew that the only reason she was here was to help her sister Kate live. Kate is dying from acute leukemia. From donating white blood cells to bone marrow Anna has helped her in numerous ways. But when she finds out she will have to donate a kidney to her she decided that she has had enough and wants to be a normal kid.
    When I read the book I fell in love with it. It was written really well and each chapter you got to hear a new person's point of view in the story. I honestly thought the movie couldn't come close to being as good. I was right. Not that the movie wasn't good, because it was I just thought that because the book included so much information from the characters life that there was no way to make the movie have that same feeling without taking parts out or making it 9 hours long. The main thing that made me mad was they left out characters that I felt made the story better. For example the child care service worker who let Anna stay with her during the trial was never even mentioned in the movie but was one of the main characters in the book. That was only one of the many important characters they left out.
    One thing that the movie did really well was it changed perspectives like it did in the book and didn't all make it from the young girls perspective. They included flashbacks like they did in the story but some of them should have been played earlier. For example someone who didn't read the book might have been confused to why she was suing her parents because the very first scene was Anna getting a lawyer to sue them. I understand with all great books to make a movie off of it you can't include every detail in it but I just feel like in this one they could of made some of the characters personality traits a bit more clearer like Jesse, Anna's older brother is portrayed as a kid who is not going in the right direction and gets in trouble with the police on more than one occasion. But from watching the movie and not reading the book I would have never known that. Although the movie did have a few things in it that I really enjoyed, for example I really like how they made Kate seem so loving to her younger sister and accepting to her decision even though she will most likely die. And they did a good job making the mom so determined to help the one daughter live she forgets to care and love for her other one.
    The biggest thing that the movie changed which I actually liked better than the book was the ending. In the book it ended with Anna getting into a car accident and it left her brain dead. They then used her kidney to save Kate. In the movie they didn't kill Anna, she didn't even get in a car accident. It ended with Kate passing away with her mom lying next to her in the hospital and then shows a clip of the family later on a lot happier. I liked this ending better because it was more what you would of expected were as in the book you were not expecting the healthy one to die from a car accident and while she was brain dead have her kidney given to her older sister. Both endings were extremely sad, it just depends on if you like the more predictable ending vs. the surprising ending.      Overall I think the movie did an ok job with creating the book into a film and for the most part stayed true to the book by keeping the moral of the story the same. If I were to rate the book I would defiantly give it a 5/5 as for the movie I would give it a 2/5.