When Zachary Beaver Came to Town

Zachary Beaver Comes to Town is a wonderful book for pre-teens, especially boys, who might need to begin to recognise some of the deeper issues that other kids have to cope with (Or perhaps for kids who themselves are dealing with uncomfortable issues). This book touches upon many thought provoking ideas, what is love? Who is "cool", how does one judge others who might be over weight or "different" than the general population? The book shows us how although we might at first tend to pass judgement rather quickly, we are often wrong and perhaps it's best to investigate before moving on to the decisions we make about others. And what if someone chooses to live a life that may seem odd or not as stable as our own? Are they wrong? This book makes one think but at the same time as they are laughing, and what better way to learn than while having a good time? Read this book! You'll have a good time and learn a few things about human beings at the same time.

My 5th grade son read this for a book report he hates reading but with the movie he was eager to finish the book to see the movie.

Bought this as a fun way to close out our lesson on the book. Just terrible. But, movies rarely portray a book properly.

Like another reviewer here, I am a teacher who purchased this movie to go along with reading the book "When Zachary Beaver Came to Town".The film is a great compliment to the book, and a good family movie in it's own right.There is plenty here to discuss - prejudice, loss, friendship - for either the classroom or a family film night. Keep a little Kleenix handy, though. There are some tear jerking aspects.

Great movie. My 13 year old son read this book as part of a reading class assignment. Afterwards we bought the movie to help him see the book. No bad language and had a nice moral about acceptance.

I was looking for a DVD film of the book "When Zachary Beaver Came To Town" to tie into a lesson plan for a literature unit for that novel. The first place I always check is Amazon and low and behold I located the DVD and at a great price!

I bought this for my 6th grade literature class. We read the book in class, and I thought it would be fun to watch the movie too. First, the plot is very jumbled up-events happen in a different order than in the book, and of course, with most movies made from books, other plot points are added to make the movie interesting. While this isn't that big of a deal, what is a big deal is the language in the film. There is unnecessary curse words that are making me wonder if I can show the film in class (i.e. the g-d word, fat a**). I was excited to watch this with my class, but now I'm just glad I previewed it, since I'm worried if I show it, I may have some angry parents to contend with.It's too bad the language is in the film: it's unnecessary, and it doesn't help the plot of the film move forward.

I'm the last person to take kindly to any overtly religious promotion or overtones. In this case, my take on the baptism deal is: it was important to the poor kid, a kid who had little to grasp except for what his mother said and that was that he'd need to be baptized to see her in heaven. Yes, I almost cringed when the kids were reading passages from the bible. But, as said, it was something important to the kid and his friends sought a solution. (This, nonetheless, did result in a reduced star in my rating.) But I didn't feel the movie was preachy or overly moralistic. Overall, it was a treat, well acted with darling kids, a message of tolerance, portrayals of unfairness in life, etc. I thought the flick was a gem.

My family love this film. I'd been looking for it for a while so was pleased to see it so reasonibly priced.

sehr coooler film und eine schöne story....aber leider ist der film auf englisch.....was den film aber nicht schlechter oder langweiliger macht wenn man ein bischen englisch versteht;)

The film has a real feel good factor to it. I loved the fact in this selfish world, some kids took the time to do something for someone else, ie the baptism.

Great thanks

This film revolved mainly round one boy (Toby Wilson played by Jonathan Lipnicki) and his friend Cal (Cody Linley). The boys make the acquaintance of a boy called Zachary Beaver who arrived in the town as a one man (sorry one boy) side show freak.As events take their place the boys find themselves dealing with loss, abandonment and friendship problems. It's a good family film with several morals to the tale, like family should always be valued, and never judge a book by the cover, friends (good friends) are important, and many more.It's a nice Sunday afternoon family film, the only thing that really surprised me was it wasn't made by Disney.As usual region 2 = 2nd class dvd buyers, no extras and NO SUBTITLES - disgraceful