12 Movies for Mothers and Daughters

The first 4 movies are G rated and I considered them to be fine for my girls when they were about 5 or 6 years of age.

Mary Poppins 

 I remembered the songs from this movie from when I was a little girl. Based on the book by P.L.Travers, an Australian author. You can find out about her here.

The Sound of Music 

Another musical I remember from my childhood. A good children's book to tie in with the movie is 'The Trapp Family Book' by Hans Wilhelm.

Little Lord Fauntelroy 

A sweet story based on the book by Francis Hodgson Burnett, this is a very enjoyable movie which was done in 1995.

 Anne of Green Gables 

There are three DVDs in this series but only the first one is rated G so I save the other two which have more adult concepts for later (Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel PG - about age 10 and Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story - about age 12 - 14).

For about age 8 and up:

The Inn of the Sixth Happiness

Based on the true story of Gladys Alward, a missionary to China, who ends up with a hundred homeless children in her care when the Japanese invade China leading them to safety in a gruelling trek through the mountains. 

For about age 10 and up:

Miss Potter 

The story of Beatrix Potter very beautifully done with little snippets of Peter Rabbit and other characters from her books. The girls and I loved the clothes Beatrix wore in this movie.

Ever After 

A retelling of the fairy tale Cinderella. This movie was a lot of fun. A bit of romance done in an appropriate way and an interesting heroine with plenty of character and the nasty girls get their just desserts at the end.

Pride and Prejudice 

We've probably watched every version and the BBC production definitely wins, maybe because it is satisfyingly long.

A few years ago 6 of our children came down with chicken pox one after the other and I had about 6 weeks where I barely left the house. One of the girls was really sick with it and came into our room late one night crying because she couldn't sleep and was so miserable. My husband suggested I put on P & P and watch it with her. So that's what we did and it helped distract her for 6 hours......I was totally stuffed by the end of it.

Around age 12 and up:

Cranford

Set in a market town in England in 1842 and adapted from the novels of Elizabeth Gaskell, this movie is all about the idiosyncrasies of its inhabitants and really is charming. There are some medical emergencies in the movie in which might be a bit much for the squeamish and require a preview but overall it is lovely and has some very poignant moments.

Return to Cranford

Follows on from Cranford and includes the arrival of the railroad to the town, some nicely done romance and gentle humour.

About age 14 and up:

North and South

Pride and Prejudice is a great movie but the characters are often restrained and reserved. North and South has a similar theme to P & P in many ways but there is much more feeling and emotion between the characters which enables you to understand and appreciate the struggles and disparity of the two main characters. The musical soundtrack adds a wonderful ethereal quality which enhances the story.

 Jane Eyre

We've watched about 3 versions of Jane Eyre but this one is tops. It is nice and long, stays true to the story and captures the dialogue contained in the book very well. Timothy Dalton portrays an authentic Mr. Rochester and Zelah Clarke was just the right sort of person to play Jane Eyre. 

An Australian Classic - A Town Like Alice by Neville Shute

This is a story I thought I had some familiarity with as I remembered seeing the movie many years ago - man meets woman during WW2, they are separated and years later they meet again - with Alice Springs in Central Australia involved somewhere.

But the book was a surprise to me when I finally got to read it and not quite what I expected.  A tale of an unusual romance, the story is narrated by a Mr. Strachan an elderly solicitor living in post war London in 1948.

 

When one of his clients dies leaving behind a significant inheritance he conducts a search to trace the whereabouts of the beneficiaries. After some initial difficulty he makes contact with his client's only surviving relative, Jean Paget, his niece, a young woman in her late twenties and he informs her of the inheritance.

A condition of his client's will was that Mr. Strachan was to keep the money in a trust for Jean until she was 35 years old and until then she would only receive any income from the estate and so because of his ongoing involvement with Jean's affairs, a relationship was forged between Jean and the solicitor and he came to hear about her experiences in Malaya during the war years.

Jean had lived in Malaya up until she was 11 years of age, when her family returned to England. Her older brother returned to Malaya in 1937 when Jean was sixteen and Jean followed in 1939 when the phoney war was in progress; the view being that if war broke out Jean was better off in Malaya than in England. Two years later the Japanese were advancing through Malaya and Jean, unable to evacuate, was captured by the Japanese and with a group of about 30 other woman and children was forced to walk for miles through the jungle, many of them dying in the process.

Jean became the leader of this group, caring for the baby of one of the women who had died during the march; translating, bargaining and negotiating with the villagers and Japanese soldiers as they travelled.

One day they came across Joe Harman, an Australian prisoner who helped them steal some food from the Japanese. The theft was discovered and he was punished.

'Darkness was closing down in my London sitting-room, the early darkness of a stormy afternoon. The rain still beat upon the window. The girl sat staring into the fire, immersed in her sad memories. 'They crucified him,' she said quietly. 'They took us all down to Kuantan, and they nailed his hands to a tree, and beat him to death. They kept us there, and made us look on while they did it.'

Jean returned to a quiet and lonely life in England after the war and upon learning of her inheritance she decided she would go back to Malaya to build a well for the women of the village her group lived with towards the end of the Japanese occupation.

It was here that she discovered Joe Harman had unbelievably survived his ordeal but had been hospitalised for a long time and so her quest began to find out what became of him.

In this novel Neville Shute in an Author's Note pays tribute to 'the most gallant lady I have ever met,' and mentions a party of around eighty Dutch women and children who were forced by the Japanese (who were unwilling to assume responsibility for them) to trek for two and a half years around the island of Sumatra, leaving less than thirty of them alive by the end of their journey.

A Town Like Alice was first published in 1950 and reflects the culture of the time so you will encounter uncomplimentary remarks particularly about the Japanese and also Australian Aboriginals.

Easy No Knead Bread

You’ll need:

1 Tablespoon instant dried yeast

1 Tablespoon of molasses or honey

1 pint/600mls warm water

5 cups of flour (e.g. 2 wholemeal, 2 white, 1 rye)

Pinch of salt

What you do:

Mix first 3 ingredients together and when it has become frothy add to the flour

Stir with a big wooden spoon or spatula until combined

Spoon mixture into a greased bread tin and stand in a warmish place for about 30-40 minutes (it will only rise slightly)

 

Put into a cold oven, turn on and bake at 190 degrees C (375 degrees F)

Turn out onto a wire rack to cool
This loaf is fairly dense as I used more wholemeal flour and added oats

Variations

Substitute besan/rice/millet flours or a mixture of them in place of a cup of the flours above

Add a couple of tablespoons of ground flaxseeds or ½ cup of oats

Use buttermilk instead of water

Add herbs or caraway seeds to the mixture

Add an egg to the wet mixture if you want a bit of protein

I got this recipe from a friend of mine when I was first married. I hadn’t ever made yeast bread before and she told me the recipe was foolproof.

I was mortified when this ‘foolproof’ recipe failed every time I attempted it so I stopped trying to make it. 

A couple of years later we moved house and I found the recipe and decided to try again and lo and behold it worked. The problem had been the seals on the old oven we had at the time.

A good recipe for a beginner or a child.