ABSTRACT
Popular culture for children is increasingly characterized by a digital multimedia dimension. One highly visible example is the adoption, adaptation, and reversioning of stories from literary picture books to movies, animations, and videogames (Unsworth, 2006; Unsworth, Thomas, Simpson, & Asha, 2005). The experience of literary narrative by today’s children involves taking the “multiplicity of media and versions for granted” (Mackey, 1994, p. 19). Classic picture books such as Where the Wild Things Are (Sendak, 1962) as a popular mainstream animated movie (Jonze et al., 2009) have been highly celebrated within broad popular culture. Australian picture book author Shaun Tan’s winning of an Oscar in 2011 for the best animated short film of his book The Lost Thing (2000) initiated a flurry of online responses from children and adults. These phenomena indicate how digital multimedia is merging literary picture book culture with popular culture animated movies.
