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Adaptations for Young Audiences: Critical Challenges, Future Directions

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Abstract

Some of the earliest film adaptations were of children’s texts, many of which have been readapted multiple times. However, despite the close imbrication of the film industry and children’s literature since the early twentieth century, few adaptation scholars have turned their attention to the rich resource that children’s and youth culture provides. This chapter surveys trends in approaches to adaptation, in particular the shift from “fidelity criticism” to a dialogic intertextual approach; the recent move back to a modified form of “fidelity criticism”; and the cultural work that has thus far been achieved in the field of adaptation studies and children’s and youth culture. In doing so, it examines the critical challenges faced by scholars in the field and the potent possibilities future scholarship might pursue.

This chapter was first published in International Research in Children’s Literature (IRCL), vol. 9, issue 2, 2016. Reprinted here with permission of IRCL and Edinburgh University Press.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Robyn McCallum

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  1. Robyn McCallum
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  1. Pittsburg State University , Pittsburg, KS, USA

    Casie Hermansson

  2. Pittsburg State University , Pittsburg, KS, USA

    Janet Zepernick

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McCallum, R. (2019). Adaptations for Young Audiences: Critical Challenges, Future Directions. In: Hermansson, C., Zepernick, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Children's Film and Television. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17620-4_2

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