The 12 Greatest Tearjerkers Based on Books

Sometimes you just need a good cry at the movies, and 'A Monster Calls' will give you just that. Adapted from the Patrick Ness children’s novel by 'The Impossible' director J.A. Bayona, it joins these 12 other great tearjerkers based on books. Grab your hankies!

Nicholas Sparks is the king of the tearjerker novel turned movie. He's already seen 11 big-screen adaptations of his stories. 'The Notebook,' starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams at their dreamiest, is far and away the best.

A weepie for millennials. John Green's witty, honest teen cancer saga became a box office smash, raking in over $300 million worldwide and giving Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort a welcome escape from the 'Divergent' franchise.

From 'E.T.' (1982) to 'The BFG' (2016), Steven Spielberg knows how to tug at the ol’ heartstrings. His adaptation of Alice Walker's best seller remains one of his most emotional outings – and Whoopi Goldberg has never been better.

Like 'A Monster Calls,' this movie about two preteens (Josh Hutcherson, AnnaSophia Robb) and their make-believe world is a fantasy designed to make you bawl. Katherine Paterson's 1977 book was coadapted by her son David.

British author Jojo Moyes wrote the script for this one, based on her own novel about a suicidal paraplegic (Sam Claflin) and his plucky caregiver (Emilia Clarke, sans dragons). Even if critics were indifferent, 'Me Before You' was a bona fide hit.

A couple raises an abandoned baby as their own – until the birth mother turns up. This Michael Fassbender/Alicia Vikander/Rachel Weisz melodrama is a tearjerker for the art house crowd. Based on Australian writer M. L. Stedman's debut novel.

We're cheating a little here, as Oscar-winning screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana adapted a short story (by Annie Proulx), not a novel. But you'll choke up during Heath Ledger's final scene – and you'll miss the actor all the more.

Larry McMurtry's own novel was turned into this Best Picture Oscar winner. Try to contain yourself as Debra Winger's character fights a losing battle with cancer. Shirley MacLaine and Jack Nicholson provide Academy Award-winning support.

You didn't think we'd overlook the entire subgenre of "heartbreaking dog movies," did you? 'Marley & Me,' based on John Grogan's memoir, is to our generation what 1957's 'Old Yeller' was to our grandparents'… except a lot funnier.

Bette Midler's rendition of "Wind Beneath My Wings" is now a wedding-dance staple, but it began as a song of friendship in this classic chick flick about a singer (Midler) and her dying BFF (Barbara Hershey), based on Iris Rainer Dart's novel.

Some joy, some luck… and lots of sobbing. Amy Tan's novel about four Chinese-American women and their immigrant mothers was directed by Wayne Wang with great tenderness, and it connected with audiences of all backgrounds.

Don't believe in a Stephen King weepie? Then you haven't seen this prison fantasy starring the late, great Michael Clarke Duncan. We also tear up at two other King-derived dramas: 'Stand by Me' and 'The Shawshank Redemption.'