The Help on the Big Screen - This Weekend!

It's finally that time! Kathryn Stockett's highly praised novel The Help will be in theaters everywhere this weekend! Whether you see it with a group of great friends or alone with a bucket of popcorn, take a couple of hours of leisure and make it a RRPQ assignment! I want to know what you think of the movie! Let's discuss it during the next meeting!

How well do you know Kathryn Stockett?

• Kathryn Stockett goes by the nickname "Kitty," but she won't mind if you call her Kathryn.
  
  

• Skeeter and Constantine's relationship and Mae Mobley and Aibileen's are inspired by Stockett's relationship with the black woman who cared for her as a child, Demetrie.

• The British cover of The Help features a photo of two black women in white maid's uniforms on either side of a little white girl in a pushchair (a stroller for big-kids). The photo is from The National Congress archives, and was considered too controversial for the US cover. Why do you think that is?

• Actress Octavia Spencer has been cast as Minny. This is a good thing, because Minny was actually inspired by Spencer, who is friends with Stockett.

• Stockett never imagined her book as a bestseller and says she might have written it differently if she had known that gazillions of people would read it!

• The film version of The Help is a collaboration between Stockett and several of her childhood friends, also natives of Mississippi.

• Nearly fifty literary agents rejected The Help. It took Stockett five years to find one to represent her. Bet those rejecters are crying now – every time they look at the bestseller lists.