ABSTRACT
In children's literature theory the idea of a 'world literature for children' has been discussed since the early twentieth century. Transformations of world literature into a picturebook format often address a dual audience: children and adults. These picturebooks transcend the boundaries between child and adult readers in different ways and on multiple levels. The transformation of world literature into a picturebook format often means the reduction of a text of 150 to 200 or even more pages to thirty-two or forty-eight pages. The term 'world literature' has oscillated between at least three different meanings/concepts since it was first mentioned more than two centuries ago by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. "Literature in general, and world literature in particular, has often been seen in one or more of three ways: as an established body of classics, as an evolving canon of masterpieces, or as multiple windows on the world".
