4 of My favorite Childrens Movies that I still love as an adult and 1 book

The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964)

Hailed as one of the greatest films of all time, The Incredible Mr. Limpet is a story about the wonders of imagination and the triumph of the spirit. Live-action and 2-D animation combine to tell the story of a man who longs to be a fish after he is classified by the Navy as an F4 - "too small and too weak to be a soldier." When his dream of being a fish becomes a reality, Henry uses his underwater prowess to become the Navy's strongest secret weapon. Starring Don Knotts - How can you go wrong

The Island at the Top of the World (30th Anniversary Edition) (1974)
Starring Donald Sinden as a British businessman looking for his lost son in the Arctic, and one of my earliest childhood heroes David Hartman as an American archaeology professor looking for his own place in history. Together with a kooky French inventor (Jacques Marin, later the cop/bad guy in Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo), a pre Hindenburg zeppelin and an eskimo (very different role for Mako) they find Sinden's son and quite a bit more.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (30th Anniversary Edition) (1971)

During WWII in England, Charlie, Carrie, and Paul Rawlins are sent to live with Eglantine Price, an apprentice witch. Charlie blackmails Miss Price that if he is to keep her practices a secret, she must give him something, so she takes a bedknob from her late father's bed and places the "famous magic traveling spell" on it, and only Paul can activate it. Their first journey is to a street in London where they meet Emelius Browne, headmaster of Miss Price's witchcraft training correspondence school. Miss Price tells him of a plan to find the magic words for a spell known as Substitutiary Locomotion, which brings inanimate objects to life. This spell will be her work for the war effort.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Full Screen Edition) (1968)

Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke) is an inventor way ahead of his time, whose inventions don't always work the way they are intended. If you think his name is weird, the female lead is Truly Scrumptious (Sally Ann Howes), the daughter of a rich sweet manufacturer. This unlikely pair, along with his two kids and the wonderful car, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, are the star players in a story which starts out being about pirates, and ends up as a rescue mission. With comic support from Caractacus' father, and a toy maker (Benny Hill, in an uncharacteristic G rated performance), they defeat the schemes of spies (kind of like Laurel and Hardy combined with Boris and Natasha), an evil Baron and Baroness,and a wicked childcatcher, to bring the story within a story to a predictable but entertaining end.

The scenery is breathtaking, especially the Vulgarian castle and surroundings, and since this is a 1968 movie, we can forgive the lack of finesse in the special effects, where the characters stick out like sore thumbs from the backgrounds, and wires can be seen attached to Professor Potts during a dance sequence.

Stranger from the Depths Don't be scared off by the price you can get them on Ebay for 10.00 as I just did but the book is rare and there aren't a lot of copies out there which is sad.


Publisher: Scholastic 1970, first Juvenile/young adult reading

"Look!" says Gary, as they climb down the cliff. "In that dark opening over there....something is gleaming."

"It's a tiny statue!" exclaims his brother. "It looks like a lizard man....and i think it's made of diamond."

Where has the statue come from? Who made it? The answers lead Gary and his brother into terrifying adventures in a world of fantastic people - miles beneath the ocean floor!