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" Parents, set your DVRs: The Watsons Go to Birmingham, based on the award-winning young adult novel, premieres on Friday, September 20 at 8 p.m. on the Hallmark Channel. It&amp;#039;s 1963, and when the Watson&amp;#039;s teenage son Byron begins acting out, the family decides that he needs both a change of atmosphere and his Southern grandmother&amp;#039;s brand of strict discipline. So the Michigan fivesome\u2014goofball dad, Daniel, kind but stern mom, Wilona, troubled Byron, nerdy middle brother Kenny, and baby sister Joey\u2014road-trip to visit family in Alabama. After an eventful summer, their stay ends with one of the most tragic events in Civil Rights history, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, in which four young girls were killed. The movie is the passion project of producer-screenwriter Tonya Lewis Lee, wife of director Spike Lee, and Nikki Silver, a former Reading Rainbow producer who first teamed up with Tonya for the N [now Teen Nick] series Miracle Boys. Fans of the TV series The Wonder Years, Tonya and Nikki wanted their adaptation of the Watsons to similarly tackle historical facts through the story of one loving and lovable family. We talked to the filmmakers about what makes the Watson family so special and why they hope this movie will change how we talk to kids about the Civil Rights movement, both at school and at home. The Watson family dynamic is adorable, and the parents&amp;#039; initial problem\u2014a teen who could go either way if he keeps acting out, if he&amp;#039;s friends with the wrong people\u2014is a storyline that is so timeless and relatable. Tonya Lewis Lee: Yes. I have teenagers myself, so I know it&amp;#039;s a challenge. And my parents will tell you that I was a challenge! No matter how well-behaved your kid is, teenagers are difficult, and [the Watsons] are really trying to parent these kids and get them through [the tough stuff]. I really love that. These parents are working so hard to try to make sure they keep their kid on the right track. A lot of parents will relate. The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing happened before either of you were born. Do you remember when you first learned about it? TLL: I remember being in sixth grade, watching what I believe was [PBS documentary series] Eyes on the Prize with my parents. I don&amp;#039;t remember, but I&amp;#039;m sure they mentioned the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. What I do remember was learning about the Civil Rights movement then, and being really afraid of what I was seeing at 12 years old. So I don&amp;#039;t know if that&amp;#039;s when I actually heard about the bombing, but I remember having that feeling. You remember being a kid and learning that other kids were hurt. TLL: Exactly. That kids were marching, that kids had been hurt. I remember being scared by that. You two have been trying to get this book made into a movie for almost a decade. How did you know that it belonged onscreen? Nikk Silveri: Well, it was clearly a story that needed to be told. These stories are not told enough. One of the things that we&amp;#039;re so excited about is that Walden Media, our partner, has put together an entire classroom curriculum based on this film, because Civil Rights is just not taught correctly in our schools. That&amp;#039;s an exciting side of this. TLL: For me, adapting this book into a screenplay was really about showing the family dynamic in order to make history interesting and relatable to young people. We&amp;#039;re able to tell a bigger story through the journey of this fun, quirky family in the middle of the hotbed of the Civil Rights movement of 1963. I don&amp;#039;t think I&amp;#039;ve really seen the Civil Rights movement told through the eyes of a child [middle brother Kenny] before. NS: And a child from the north going down south, too\u2014that is absolutely a unique perspective. The tone of the book is very much like The Wonder Years, a show that both of us have always really loved. And I think that&amp;#039;s one of the reasons we knew that it would make a great film. Tonya, you had read The Watsons Go to Birmingham with your kids, and Spike was nominated for an Oscar for Four Little Girls, a documentary about the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. How did you talk to your kids about this event and about the Civil Rights movement in general? TLL: It&amp;#039;s funny, because as I think about it, I don&amp;#039;t think they&amp;#039;ve seen Four Little Girls at this point. But we read The Watsons Go to Birmingham aloud 10 years ago, and it was a wonderful opportunity to really enjoy the [Watsons themselves as a] family\u2014we literally laughed out loud while we were reading it\u2014and then we were able to have a real conversation about American history. My parents lived in the segregated South, in Virginia, so it was important to me to talk to my kids about their history from a young age, about where they come from\u2014from the positive point of view that they were survivors, that they were strong. This book gave us the opportunity to go a little deeper into what segregation was like for their grandparents and also to talk about the children&amp;#039;s crusade and how important it is to lend your voice to the community, to make a difference. I really hope that my children do make a difference in some way. Now your movie will become the launching point for so many similar conversations. Say I&amp;#039;m a parent who is going to watch with my kids. Should I explain what&amp;#039;s going to happen beforehand? Or should I talk to them afterward and just be there to answer their questions? NS: We really want people to watch the film as a piece of entertainment, as a film in itself, and let the conversation flow from there. Especially with kids, you don&amp;#039;t want to put an idea in their mind of how they should interpret something beforehand. I think adults do that way too much. And as we said, we&amp;#039;ve also created this curriculum to help people with those conversations. TLL: You can access that through . I also want to add that the film is entertainment\u2014there are a lot of laughs and substance\u2014it&amp;#039;s not boring. Next up for your company, Tonik Productions, is an adaptation of The Giver. Is children&amp;#039;s literature going to continue to be a springboard for you? NS: Tonya and I just love to tell great stories, and we have found that a lot of these great stories reside in young adult literature, an area both of us feel very strongly about. We just optioned a really exciting new series of books called The Gallagher Girls by Ally Carter, and we can&amp;#039;t wait to do that one. We are writing a script based on another well-known young adult book called Monster by Walter Dean Myers, who also is the ambassador for children&amp;#039;s literature in the U.S. So, yes, I think it is a springboard for us, but at very bottom of it is just telling a great story. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/interviews/a16103/the-watsons-go-to-birmingham/>