The movie of Kathyrn Stockett’s novel The Help opens this coming Wednesday and promotion is in full gear, including an Entertainment Weekly cover story and coverage in all the national newspapers. The focus of many of the stories is the childhood friendship between the author and and the movie’s director Tate Taylor, who had only directed two small films (the most successful made $7,000) when he got an early look at the book and loved it immediately.

Here at EarlyWord, we feel like we grew up with The Help. We first covered it when editor Amy Einhorn pitched it during an AAP Editors Buzz session. Shortly after it was published, we noted that libraries had ordered it cautiously, but holds were growing. Story after story followed, tracking the book’s rise and then plans for the movie. Now, over two years after it first appeared, libraries are still showing holds on it in all formats, but on many more copies.

Will we be seeing another novel from Stockett? She tells Entertainment Weekly‘s “Shelf Life” blog that she’s working on a story set in Mississippi in the 1920’s; “it’s about a group of women who were raised in a rather white privileged home and then the Depression hit and suddenly they have no support. They have absolutely no marketable skills. So they have to figure out how to work their way up into the world and figure out how to earn a living and support each other and take care of each other.”

This entry was posted on Friday, August 5th, 2011 at 7:25 am and is filed under Books & Movies, Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.