ABSTRACT
There is a school of thought which holds that books are infinitely and inevitably superior to films and (especially) television, and that any attempt to make a filmed version of a ‘good’ book (that is, one which critics and/or academics have decreed has literary merit) is doomed to fail. The antipathy to filmed versions of texts is symptomatic of attitudes toward forms of popular culture through the ages, but in the light of cultural and technological changes, such hostility needs to be reconsidered. In particular, the view that watching adaptations of texts is intellectually inferior to reading, and may inhibit reading, is retrograde. As Meek (1991) argues, children are not necessarily passive and indiscriminate viewers, but while looking at visual media may be developing ‘visual literacy’ skills which can complement and even extend those acquired through more conventional forms of literacy. The ability to decode complex visual narratives precedes, but certainly does not preclude, a similar degree of sophistication and facility with written texts. Indeed, most picture books (which usually constitute the first stage in the process of learning to read printed texts) depend on the child's pre-existing ability to follow visual narratives. Moreover, as is discussed in other chapters, many of the best contemporary picture books draw substantially on narrative techniques developed in other visual media to make an alliance between verbal and visual skills.
