Friday, March 13, Disney+ released a movie adaptation of Jerry Spinelli’s book Stargirl. The question with most book-to-movie adaptations is how does the movie compares to the book. Stargirl is no exception to this question.

The movie and the book seemed to have very little variation between the big plot points that make the story what it is. The movie seemed to follow the book almost exactly, which is great for those people who are big fans of the source. There is still, of course, a little variation in the way the story is set up in the movie compared to the book.

In the book, Leo, the main character, receives a porcupine tie as a present from his uncle when he moves to a little town in Arizona. His uncle’s present inspired Leo to try and collect porcupine ties, but he could never find any. That is until his fourteenth birthday when someone left him one on his doorstep. After, he started receiving them every year. 

In the movie, it happened a little differently. Leo’s dad had a porcupine tie that Leo loved, but then Leo’s dad died. He was allowed to wear that tie to his dad’s funeral and wore it every day after that. His mom moved them to a small town in Arizona after his dad’s death in order to get a fresh start. When he went to school, Leo got picked on, and someone cut his tie. He stopped wearing them, but on his ninth birthday, he found one on his doorstep and received them from an anonymous source every year on his birthday since then. 

Little changes like that were all throughout the movie, but there was nothing super big that changed. When it comes to the book, I found it boring and strange, and I had a hard time reading it. However, I really enjoyed watching the movie. The movie made the strange plot of the book make more sense to me. Usually, it seems that the book is considered better than the movie, but this time the movie is better than the book. I’d give the book three out of five stars and the movie four out of five stars.