Screen Adaptations and the Politics of Childhood: Transforming Children's Literature into Film

by Robyn McCallum

Overview

This book features a cutting edge approach to the study of film adaptations of literature for children and young people, and the narratives about childhood those adaptations enact. Historically, film media has always had a partiality for the adaptation of ‘classic’ literary texts for children. As economic and cultural commodities, McCallum points out how such screen adaptations play a crucial role in the cultural reproduction and transformation of childhood and youth, and indeed are a rich resource for the examination of changing cultural values and ideologies, particularly around contested narratives of childhood. The chapters examine various representations of childhood: as shifting states of innocence and wildness, liminality, marginalisation and invisibility. The book focuses on a range of literary and film genres, from ‘classic’ texts, to experimental, carnivalesque, magical realist, and cross-cultural texts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137395405
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/16/2018
Series:	Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture
Edition description:	1st ed. 2018
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Robyn McCallum is an independent scholar in the area of children’s and youth literature, film and culture. She taught at Macquarie University, Australia, for twenty-five years, and is author of Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction (1999), and co-author of Retelling Stories, Framing Culture (1998; with John Stephens) and New World Orders in Contemporary Children’s Literature (2008; with Clare Bradford, Kerry Mallan and John Stephens).

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: ‘Palimpsestuous Intertextualities’ and the Cultural Politics of Childhood.- 2. The Imperial Child and the Romantic Child: Film Adaptation as Cultural Capital.- 3. The Dream Child and the Wild Child: Adapting the Carnivalesque.- 4. ‘Flapping Ribbons of shaped Space-Time’: Genre Mixing, Intertextuality and Metafiction in Fiction and Film Adaptation.- 5. Angels, Monsters and Childhood: Liminality and the Quotidian Surreal.- 6. Invisible Children: Representing Childhood across Cultures.- 7. Epilogue.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

​“McCallum’s astute and wide ranging ‘sequel’ to her earlier Retelling Stories (with John Stephens) brings up-to-the-minute conversations in adaptation to bear on oft-neglectedchildren’s genres. The result is an illuminating and confident study, from a recognized expert in the field, of ways in which children’s literature and film continue to expand boundaries and challenge expectations. A must read for anyone interested in youth media and adaptation.” (Casie Hermansson, Professor of English Literature at Pittsburg State University, USA)

“McCallum’s study will provide children’s literature and culture scholars the critical resources for studying the considerable number and types of adaptations in this area. Drawing from the critical tools found in the burgeoning adaptation field, the study considers the ideological functions, audiences (real and implied), and cultural effects of adaptations of children’s stories. Readers familiar with John Stephens’ and Robyn McCallum’s influential Retelling Stories, Framing Culture can consider this an excellent sequel to that work.” (Mike Cadden, Professor of English and Director of Childhood Studies, Missouri Western State University, USA)

Editorial Reviews

Screen Adaptations and the Politics of Childhood: Transforming Children’s Literature into Film is an exciting contribution to the area of adaptation studies. … This book should be of particular interest to scholars working in film adaptation studies, and especially to those whose research addresses the filmic adaptation of children’s literature.” (The Lion and the Unicorn, Vol. 43 (2), April, 2019)

From the Publisher