other media. These serve as cross-media prequels and sequels which they ‘know’ the
readers already know.
The issues of censorship, particularly for film and video versions of these stories, are
profound, and hint at the ways in which any type of adoption (or its attempted
prevention) predicates views about childhood, socialisation, morality, and imaginative
health. For instance, recent MUDS (Multi-User Dungeons, virtual reality developments of
Dungeons and Dragons) may be based on Narnia, Dune and the universe of Star Trek,
but their ability to represent characters in simulated sex, or to ‘change’ the user’s
gender in order to explore new sexual experience, has led to the design of systems (for
example where the virtual world is based on the Land of Oz or Yellowstone National
Park) with problematic implications.
Arguably, marketing and merchandising cross-media products by global multi-media
companies and conglomerates is having a more irresistible effect on what children and
young people adopt than can books alone. This is certainly so in the information field,
where topics and layouts and texts reveal a heavy influence of televisual presentation. It
is no longer convincing to characterise adoption and adaptation as approaching each
other from across a divide between adults and children, although some proof of this will
always remain in terms of the way in which books and films like Mary Poppins and
characters like Babar and Paddington Bear will always be for children. Neil Postman’s
thesis of the cultural fusion between children and adults, turning them into ‘adultified
children’ and ‘childified adults’ is one of many modern factors which changes the
context and increases the complexity of adoption, but the essential challenge of what to
encourage children to read, and discourage them from reading, remains very much the
same.
ReferencesApplebee, A. (1978) The Child’s Concept of Story, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Carpenter, H. (1985) Secret Gardens: A Study of the Golden Age of Children’s Literature, London:
Allen and Unwin.
Crouch, M. (1962) Treasure Seekers and Borrowers, London: Library Association.
Fisher, M. (1964) Intent upon Reading, 2nd edn, Leicester: Brockhampton Press.
Fry, D. (1985) Children Talk About Books: Seeing Themselves as Readers, Milton Keynes: Open
University Press.
Jan, I. (1973) On Children’s Literature, London: Allen Lane.
Postman, N. (1982) The Disappearance of Childhood, New York: Delacorte Press.
Protherough, R. (1983) Developing Response to Fiction, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Rose, J. (1984) The Case of Peter Pan, London: Macmillan.
Rosenbach, A.S.W. (1971) Early American Children’s Books, New York: Dover.
Tucker, N. (1981) The Child and the Book: A Psychological and Literary Exploration, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
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