The delightful 1999 film The Iron Giant was actually an adaptation of The Iron Man, an illustrated novel published by the poet Ted Hughes in 1968, and previously reworked as a rock opera by Pete Townshend in 1989.

Hughes, of course, is perhaps more famous for being Sylvia Plath’s widower; it’s said that The Iron Man was partially written for his children in the wake of her 1963 suicide.