ABSTRACT
No study of millennial cross-reading would be complete without a consideration of adults rereading the books they once read as children. For as increasing numbers of adults engage with new children’s fi ction, they are also, not surprisingly, returning to their own childhood favourites. One indication of this trend is the reissue of children’s ‘classics’ (the term is commonly used to denote children’s fi ction written up to the mid-1970s), and the publication of new editions, oft en with strikingly sophisticated dust jacket designs. Enid Blyton, George MacDonald, S.E. Hinton, Mary Norton and H. Rider Haggard are among the classic children’s authors to have received the marketing makeover in recent years.1 Alongside contemporary children’s fi ction, these newly vamped classics are actively marketed to potential adult readers, supported by major publicity campaigns as well as reviews in the national media, from print to television and radio. Like Rowling, Haddon and Pullman, the classics are sometimes reissued in dual editions, in order to entice a double readership of adults and children.2
