Are screen adaptations of children’s literature losing the plot?
This week sees the new release of the CBBC show My Mum Tracy Beaker, an adaptation of Jaqueline Wilson’s 2018 follow-up to the much loved Tracey Beaker series. Adding to the long line of TV and film adaptations of popular children’s books, there is certainly an allure for parents and children to see their favourite children’s books leap off the page and onto the screen. While adaptations clearly draw an audience, why are children’s titles in particular so successful?
For children’s titles, the process of adaptation is perhaps even easier than books for older audiences. An adaptation emulates the act of having a story presented to the watcher and so children may be a particularly suitable audience as they are an audience used to having stories told to them verbally. According to Linda Seger, author of The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction into Film, when adapting a story for the screen, selecting material that ‘might be very rich with complexities and a certain amount of chaos’ (Seger, 2011), can be difficult. Within children’s fiction, it is the characters and templates that children connect to, and as such, when making an adaptation, it is the characters themselves and their relatability that is more important than a direct translation of plot. As such, children’s fiction may be more suitable for such adaptations. An example of this is Dreamwork’s How to Train Your Dragon, which takes the character names and basic setting, but little else from Cressida Cowell’s series of children’s books. Titles like Tracey Beaker, with its fixed and iconic cast of characters and setting, take the basic premise of the books and craft original stories that run parallel to the books without covering many of the original storylines.
Continuing the identifiability between the property and adaptation, children’s titles often have illustrations, and so many titles such as Tracey Beaker, utilise the illustrations from the book in the show. Doing so utilises synergy between both the original children’s book and the adaptation, allowing each to promote the other, prompting a positive relationship. When a popular title sells well due to an adaptation, customers become aware of the publisher’s work as well as the authors and as such, as said by Scott Shannon at Penguin Random House, “[adaptations have] expanded our reach for our authors […] we are publishing about the same [number of books], but we’re reaching more people’ (The Verge, 2017). Many authors look to these adaptations ‘to give their stories a second chance and to increase readership’ (Seger, 2011), enhancing customer awareness of the publisher’s properties. It also seems that there is a knock-on effect for the publisher’s other titles. When interviewed, Tim Holman at Orbit Books stated that the success of one title “can raise hopes and expectations for new books in the same category” (The Verge, 2017), encouraging publishers to participate in more adaptations of their titles.
Ultimately it seems, that a positive relationship between publishers and production companies helps both parties. Synergy between the properties helps to utilise the established fan-base of the original title, as well as established characters that have proven to connect with children, to boost the success of the adaptation. Furthermore, by utilising properties with unique and identifiable characters, producers of adaptations have the perfect opportunity for serialisation and for original plot lines, whilst still maintaining accuracy of characters and their traits, to ensure connection with children. Through this, publishers look to gain massive potential marketing opportunities, increased sales and a boost in customer awareness, of the adapted title, and also of other titles in the publisher’s catalogue.
Seger, L. (2011) The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction Into Film (New York: Owl Books)
Aragay, M. (2005) Books in Motion: Adaptation, Intertextuality, Authorship (New York: Rodopi)
Liptak, A. (2017) ‘Why Hollywood is turning to books for its biggest productions’ The Verge Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/26/14326356/hollywood-movie-book-adaptations-2017-expanse-game-of-thrones [Accessed: 6/2/21]
