32).Īlthough her focus is primarily on film adaptations of literature, her point is relevant to this study on picturebook adaptations of fables. And the fittest do more than survive they flourish (emphasis in the original, p. I focus on three popular fables by Aesop: “The Ants and the Grasshopper”, “The Lion and the Mouse”, and “The Hare and the Tortoise”-fables many have noted have universal appeal.Īdaptation, like evolution, is a transgenerational phenomenon … Stories do get retold in different ways in a new material and cultural environments like genes, they adapt to those new environments by virtue of mutation-in their ‘offspring’ or their adaptations. My aim, therefore, in this article, is to examine adaptations that privilege race and/or class by three African American artists to understand how they make the tales new for the Black American audience, a community within which the authors locate themselves. Other adaptations, such as Pinkney’s (2007) Little Red Riding Hood, The Nightingale (2002), The Little Match Girl (1999), and The Talking Eggs (1989) have centered race and class expanding the readership of these tales of European origin however. For instance, we are all familiar with popular retellings of fairy tales such as Grimm Brothers’ (1812) “Rapunzel” (Donna Jo Napoli’s Zel (1998) and Disney’s Tangled (2010)), and James Halliwell-Phillips’ (1886) “The Three Little Pigs” (Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith (1996), The True Story of the Three Little Pigs Trivizas and Oxenbury’s (1993) The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig-adaptations that emphasize points of view to offer narrative alternatives to otherwise traditional tales with limited interpretative possibilities that take into considerations mainly the psychological wellbeing of the White western child. Traditional publishers are also publishing more adaptations of classic fairy tales, just like film producers are producing movies based on these same tales as such, they are expanding the options of narratives from which readers/viewers can choose. The practice of adapting tales for various reasons thrives even more so today than ever given the easy access to social media platforms and to vanity presses that allow authors to self-publish.
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