SOURCE: "A Hero for the Movies," in Children's Novels and the Movies, edited by Douglas Street, New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1983, pp. 236-43.

In the following essay, Hill compares the strengths and weaknesses of Childress's book A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich with those of the film version of the novel.

The important differences between novels and films become particularly apparent when the same author treats a story in both media, as Alice Childress did when she wrote the screenplay for A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich, based on a novel she had published five years earlier.

Like other novels directed at an adolescent audience, the story has an adolescent, Benjie Johnson, as its central character. Benjie, who lives in Harlem with his mother Rose, with his grandmother, and sometimes with his "stepfather" Butler, has a heroin habit. The novel follows him through his, initially...