When I went to see the big-screen adaptation of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass last weekend, the previews before the movie were basically just one giant advertisement for reading!
From what I saw in the movie trailers, these three film adaptations are going to be first-rate. Read the books now, see the movies later, and tell us what you think!

The book: The Water Horse by Dick King-Smith
The movie: The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep
Movie release date: December 25, 2007
What’s the story? A lonely boy discovers a mysterious egg that hatches a sea creature of Scottish legend.

The books: The Spiderwick Chronicles by Tony DiTerlizzi (check our library catalog)
Book 1: The Field Guide
Book 2: The Seeing Stone
Book 3: Lucinda’s Secret
Book 4: The Ironwood Tree
Book 5: The Wrath of Mulgarath
The movie: The Spiderwick Chronicles
Movie release date: February 15, 2008
What’s the story? Upon moving into the run-down Spiderwick Estate with their mother, twin brothers Jared and Simon Grace, along with their sister Mallory, find themselves pulled into an alternate world full of faeries and other creatures.

The book: Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
The movie: Inkheart
Movie release date: March 19, 2008
What’s the story? One cruel night, Meggie's father reads aloud from a book called "Inkheart," and an evil ruler escapes the boundaries of fiction and lands in their living room. Suddenly, Meggie is smack in the middle of the kind of adventure she has only read about in books.

The release dates are from www.imdb.com. Check that site, or the official sites for each film for updates.