Literary and Transmedial Adaptations and Retellings for Children

This chapter delves into the mechanisms and dynamics of various adaptive practices within contemporary literary and media production aimed at younger audiences. It concentrates on three main areas and their complexities, that is, adaptations of adult literary classics for children; adaptations, retellings, and revisions of traditional folk and fairy tales; as well as inter‑ and intralingual adaptations of texts for children. Adaptation has always been fundamental in all these areas of children’s literature and culture. However, the evolution of communication channels and circulation of media texts have significantly reshaped the boundaries and possibilities of adaptation. As a result, adaptation has become the core of numerous intersections involving film, literature, theatre, music, visual arts, computer games, installations, blogs, and various other digital practices. The literary and media production for younger audiences thus provides rich and diverse material for the exploration of contemporary adaptations. In order to adequately capture their nature, scholars have proposed various terms, and yet I contend that there is an urgent need to find more precise denominators to adequately describe the ongoing flow of adaptive transformations within the web of pre‑texts and hypertexts.