Textual Transformations in Children's Literature: Adaptations, Translations, Reconsiderations

by Benjamin Lefebvre (Editor)

Overview

This book offers new critical approaches for the study of adaptations, abridgments, translations, parodies, and mash-ups that occur internationally in contemporary children’s culture. It follows recent shifts in adaptation studies that call for a move beyond fidelity criticism, a paradigm that measures the success of an adaptation by the level of fidelity to the "original" text, toward a methodology that considers the adaptation to be always already in conversation with the adapted text. This book visits children’s literature and culture in order to consider the generic, pedagogical, and ideological underpinnings that drive both the process and the product. Focusing on novels as well as folktales, films, graphic novels, and anime, the authors consider the challenges inherent in transforming the work of authors such as William Shakespeare, Charles Perrault, L.M. Montgomery, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and A.A. Milne into new forms that are palatable for later audiences particularly when—for perceived ideological or political reasons—the textual transformation is not only unavoidable but entirely necessary. Contributors consider the challenges inherent in transforming stories and characters from one type of text to another, across genres, languages, and time, offering a range of new models that will inform future scholarship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415509718
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/19/2012
Series:	Children's Literature and Culture , #87
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Benjamin Lefebvre teaches at Wilfrid Laurier University in Brantford, Ontario, and is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures at the University of Winnipeg, Canada.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Reconsidering Textual Transformations in Children’s Literature, Benjamin Lefebvre 1. Contested Spaces: Reconfiguring Narratives of Origin and Identity in Pocahontas and Princess Mononoke, David Whitley 2. "Popular and Timeless Literature": Ur-Stories in Graphic Novels for Young People in Contemporary India, Malini Roy 3. Preserving Roots: Vietnamese Folktales in Cross-Cultural and Transnational Translation, Hanh Nguyen 4. "You will think them poor baby-stories to make such a talk about": Prose Adaptations for Children of Shakespeare's Venetian Plays, Laura Tosi 5. Challenges for the Chalet School: From Bookshelf to Blogosphere and Back Again, Lisa Migo 6. Where (and When) Do You Live, Cinderella? Cultural Shifts in Polish Translations and Adaptations of Charles Perrault’s Fairy Tales, Monika Woźniak 7. Alice Lost and Found: A Queer Book History, Nat Hurley 8. Patterns, Power, and Paradox: International Book Covers of Anne of Green Gables across a Century, Andrea McKenzie 9. An no shinjô [Anne’s Feelings]: Politeness and Passion as Anime Paradox in Takahata’s Akage no An, Emily Somers 10. Our Home on Native Land: Adapting and Readapting Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie, Benjamin Lefebvre 11. Beyond Happily Ever After: The Aesthetic Dilemma of Multivolume Fiction for Children, Maria Nikolajeva

Editorial Reviews

"Strengths of the work are its inclusion of genres little known to a North American audience (Indian graphic novels, Vietnamese folktales, Polish versions of Cinderella, or the Chalet School series), and its diversity of critical approaches (cultural identity, "otherness," queer theory, postcolonial theory, among others). The contributors underscore how these stories help readers develop a burgeoning social consciousness. Summing Up: Recommended." —V. A. Murrenus Pilmaier, University of Wisconsin Sheboygan, CHOICE

From the Publisher