premise: But even those few things that could have made for a plot were cut . A whole third of the book is taken up by the children trying to figure out where they are and finding their way to their old castle . In the movie , they know instantly , and find the castle instantly . This is interesting , because in this part of the book there was a lot of ( rather nice ) depiction of childlike reactions and emotions to an unknown situation . Being scared of dark , being cold , hungry , thirsty ... nothing of that featured in the movie . And that was a good thing . Because of this there was no temptation to see the children as children . What may have caused some of the pilot to be cut ?
hypothesis: It 's an adaptation of multiple books .