One of my favorite movies is and always will be The Sound of Music. I’ve watched it many times and wondered about the real family behind the movie. Fortunately it wasn’t hard to find about them since the real Maria Von Trapp wrote quite a few books about them and it was the book The Story of The Trapp Family Singers, originally published in 1949, that the movie was based upon. The book describes their life both before and after their escape from Nazi occupied Austria and it’s very interesting to compare and contrast the book and the movie. For instance the real family didn’t escape by walking over the mountains as in the movie – they took a train into Italy. Also the family was musical before Maria ever appeared on the scene and the Captain wasn’t as strict as he was portrayed in the movie. Maria gave birth to three children and after emigrating to America their family’s singing group toured all over the world. A few years ago the eldest daughter of Captain Von Trapp and his first wife wrote a book called Memories Before And After The Sound Of Music about the childhood of her and her siblings and it’s very interesting to get her perspective about the family’s life before and after Maria arrived.