Adapting American Adulthood

Explores shifting conceptions of American adulthood as seen through film and TV adaptations of children’s books

• Examines picture books, children’s novels, films, television shows and fan performances published from the early twentieth century to today
• Case studies include A Series of Unfortunate Events, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mary Poppins, Maleficent, Harry Potter and How the Grinch Stole Christmas
• Compares differences in the figuration of child/adult implied audiences between children’s literature and children’s screen media
• Explores the current American adult fascination with children’s media
• Traces shifts in American adulthood and their interaction with how children’s media are made and distributed
• Fleshes out theories of the kidult—as both a person and a media type—to better articulate changes in the American mediascape

This book examines contemporary adaptations of children’s literature to illuminate two interconnected trends in twenty-first-century US culture: the courting of adult consumers by children’s media industries and the shift in American cultural conceptions of adulthood.

Using the double meaning of kidult (an audience designation and a description of a person) as a framework, Adapting American Adulthood explores how the representation of adulthood changes when texts move from the child-focused world of the children’s book to the more adult-focused world of kidult screen media and fandoms.

In studying this shift in implied audience, this book argues that children’s media companies began appealing directly to the kidult, rather than to the adult-as-parent, at the moment when the ideal adulthood sold to Americans since the 1940s started to crumble. This book examines how this shift has led to Americans reimagining an adulthood that leaves room for childness and children’s media