It is no secret that more children's books are borrowed
and sold after an adaptation has appeared - and that this continues over the years,
since DVD and video sales keep the story alive. But financial advantages is not the
only motivating factor for adapting literature to other media. If we think of the
earliest literary adaptations to film was Cyril Hepworth's 1903 eight-minute silent film
of Alice in Wonderland, we might agree with those who claim that children's literature
as a cultural form has a historically long and perhaps even a special relationship with
adaptation, which may explain why it is so frequntly mediated and recontextualised
through film, theatre, television, radio and other digital
technologies.
An adaptation is not vampiric: it does not
draw the life-blood from its source and leave it dying or dead, nor is it paler than the
adapted work. It may, on the contrary, keep that prior work alive, giving it an
afterlife it would never have had otherwise. A good story deserves retelling - and
shown again and interact anew - with stories over and over; in the process, they change
with each repetition, and yet they are recognisably the same.
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