I haven't seen the movie, but I've read the book. From the looks of it, they changes pretty much everything in the book.. so..
In the book, Jesse gives Winnie, who is 10 years old by the way, a bottle of the water from the spring. He tells her that when she's seventeen, she can drink this and go find the family and live with them. At the end of the book a dog runs down the road and tries to kill 'her' toad, the one who has been a companion of hers through out the book. After she rescues the toad she runs up to her bedroom and takes out the bottle of water and pours it on the toad (They drink from absorbing water, so it went into its system). She figures that she can get more water from the spring any time.
It is never concluded why in later years she ever went back to the spring. I believe it's because she grew up. 7 years to fall in love with someone else, would make her forget someone like Jesse who in the book she basically only knew for two or so days before they had to leave because Mae was sent to jail so they had to flee Treegap.
In the epilogue of the book, the Tucks arrive back at Treegap looking for answers. The cottage is no longer there and has been replaced with a gas station, the woods had to be brought down because of an electrical storm three years back, and the roads are now paved with black concrete. It's the year 1950 and Tuck finds hiself in a grave yard and finds a grave that announces Winnie's death, two years ago. It is said that she lives to be 78 and died in 1948. It is also said that she bared her own children and married someone else, for on the grave Tuck reads it says 'Dear Mother' and 'Dear Wife'.
American Idol is my guilty pleasure.
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Tsavo
16 years ago
They didn't change it horribly, it actually stayed very true to the book, yes some things where changed, but the essence was very much the same. I remember in the 4th grade when my teacher turned on the 1981 version of the movie, we watched a few minutes before he turned it off, commenting that it had not followed the book at all. And in response to the initial post, the ending, to me, rang far more true than becoming immortal and living happily ever after. The world doesn't work that way, and after the messages she was given by both jesses older brother AND father, she made the right choice.
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