ABSTRACT
Children's reading is now integrated into a multimedia world. That is to say, systems of communication other than books have a great bearing on what, how and why children read. Looked at in terms of flow, various routes to the child with a book in its hand can be discerned. Book (for example, a children's classic like The Secret Garden (1911)) → film script → film (1949, 1993) → child in the cinema → child with the book and/or adaptation; script → television series (for example, Bernard Ashley's Running Scared (1986)) → watched by child → Ashley simultaneously writes a book (1986) → child with the book; book (for example, Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth (1954)) → radio adaptation (1955) → child as listener → child with book…and so on. To take a classic example, Collodi's Pinocchio (1883) was adapted by Disney (1940) and made into the cartoon film that millions of people go to see, some of whom read the various Disney Corporation's book versions or some other edition of Collodi. The reading of Pinocchio by any one child is thus embedded in other processes, for example film scripting, the Disney publicity machine, social film going, video hire, family and peer-group discussion of ‘what's on’, family and peer-group discussion of the film, comparisons made by critics, teachers, family and friends between the book and the film and so on. So when a child approaches a librarian and asks for dinosaur books/love stories/horror books and so on it will be in part because that area of interest has made itself felt on the child through the multimedia world. The simple opposition of one electronic form and children's literature will not bear close examination.
