Wildwood, the first children’s novel from Colin Meloy of The Decemberists and his wife Carson Ellis, is being made into a film.

The couple sold the rights to Laika Studios in their hometown of Portland, and the company has started production on a stop-motion animated film. The 2011 book is the first of a trilogy that Meloy wrote and Ellis illustrated.

Meloy writes, “When Carson and I were first approached about film rights for the book, we were very apprehensive. We’d too long seen beloved books treated unkindly by their film counterparts. We said we’d only agree if it was either stop-motion (Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox had recently come out and we loved it) or in the meticulous hand-drawn style of the OG Watership Down. Naturally, our agent was like, ha good luck…

“But then Laika came calling and we knew it was meant to be! I can’t imagine this story in better hands…The book was ultimately written as a love letter to Portland and to Forest Park; the folks at Laika, I think, get that better than anyone.”