The Godfather, as a children’s book!

When film critic Raja Sen put up a picture of the cover image of his debut book on social media, we were intrigued. For somebody who has been writing about movies since 2004, Raja’s first book is a children’s book called The Best Baker in the World, and is an adaptation of the classic movie, The Godfather. “As someone who likes children’s books and as someone who spends his life making a living watching movies, I feel I’m uniquely qualified for something like this,” says Raja. Excerpts from an interview...

You review movies, but your first book is a children’s book, which is an adaptation of The Godfather. What’s the connection? 

(Smiles) Yes, there’s a lot going on there. Well, I’ve always liked children’s texts because I find it very imaginative and exciting. But there are constraints in genres like fantasy or magical realism, a lot of limitations writers put on themselves to adhere to rules. I don’t think rules are a bad thing but I feel children’s fiction can transcend that into something very cool. So it’s something I always wanted to get into. I started writing a children’s novel many years ago but never got around to finishing it. When you’re writing day in and day out for grown ups who are trying to see analysis in your work, you have a different voice. When you do something like this, it’s so creatively liberating to let go of all that and go into something completely different. One of the triggers was, that when I would look around for children’s books for nephews and Godchildren, I would always want to think let me buy a really cool Indian children’s book and there would not really be much. It would either be mythological or preachy. I wonder why people are not having fun! It’s okay to have a moral at the end but they also need to be told in an engaging manner. Kids today, more than our generation, are completely attuned with the best in the world. So the fact that we have to go to a bookstore and buy a Dr Seuss book which is still the best bet, to me that’s a little sad.

So how did you think of adapting a movie for the book?

The publishers and I have been in talks for a while. They wanted me to write a non-fiction book about films, but I was at a point where I was not in the space to go into a lot of cinema-based research. So the primary genesis of this was, what if we took these movie masterpieces but try and adapt it to a children’s context. So you take out the blood, violence, death and sex. Does it still work? Is there enough in the drama of it, in the characters, to justify a story? These are adult films. Let’s take out the external trappings and see that if you want to tell a kid a story about these characters, what would it be? The Best Baker in the World, is a story about a baker who has a few kids, who have to take over a bakery. It’s very sweet and there is nothing violent or crazy happening. But within that, it is still very much The Godfather. My intent was to introduce children to movies which they are definitely not old enough to see, and their parents, to be interested in what books they reading out to their children at night. All the text is in limericks and I had a lot of fun writing in rhyme. There is a lot of stuff in the books that adults and film fans will notice.

How challenging was it to adapt a mature film like The Godfather into a children’s context? 

I feel that in a children’s book, as long as you’re not talking down to kids and approaching something at their level, then they will get it and appreciate it. They like the challenge. For me, the challenge was to find the right metaphor. For instance, if someone has been murdered, in a child’s world, maybe the metaphor for that is, somebody getting a balloon popped, because that could have that big dramatic repurcussions in that universe. So it will be a series of books called My First Matinee. This book will be the first in the series, followed by another which is scheduled to be out in April next year. The idea is to take adult films and tell them to children in a way that’s respectful to the film. I want to pay them a tribute in a respectful fashion but I would also like to creatively do something crazy around them. My illustrator, Vishal Bharadwaj (not the director!) and I have thrown in jokes and movie refferences. 

One of the things we decided early on, was that this is a book about animals but not a Zootopia. So Vito Corleone, played by Marlon Brando, is an owl in the book, while Michael Corleone, played by Al Pacino in the film, is a raven. Everyone is a creature based on their personality. They are who they are because of the way they behave not because of the way they are born. These are ideas kids are very open to. The mature themes aside, I feel these stories are timeless enough to be told in a very different, whimsical fashion.

What are the other films you are considering for the other books in the series?

It’s a little up for grabs. There are two-three nominees as of now. I’m considering Lawrence Of Arabia and Fight Club. I’m definitely going to do both those books but which one I’m going to do I haven’t decided yet, but it will be something visually very different from The Godfather.