Kimberley Reynolds
and
Peter Reynolds

Kimberley Reynolds, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, University of Newcastle, UK; and
Peter Reynolds, School of Arts, University of Surrey Roehampton, and Education Associate, National Theatre, London, UK.

Institutionalising Children’s Literature for the Media: Adapting His Dark Materials for the Stage

When Northern Lights first appeared in 1995, it hardly seemed likely that a retelling of Paradise Lost for children would become both an international best-seller and the subject of wide-ranging critical acclaim. But Philip Pullman’s trilogy has become just that, and more. With the opening of the National Theatre’s two-part adaptation in December 2003, His Dark Materials joined Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Wind in the Willows, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as institutionalised children’s literature. These texts have become part of the British cultural fabric, performed at Christmas to family audiences, adapted for different audiences, produced in multiple formats, and reinterpreted for successive generations. Because of the mediatised and globalised age in which it appeared, and no doubt in line with the post-September 11th ascendancy of fantasy as entertainment, HDM has been the subject of media attention and adaptations much more rapidly than any of its predecessors. It has also been merchandised, with T-Shirts and mugs selling alongside playscripts and critical studies of the text. This presentation will draw on unique video of footage of the rehearsal and performance process of the National Theatre’s adaptation, interviews with the director, designers, and with Pullman, and comparisons of key scenes as they exist in manuscript form, in various versions of the script, in rehearsal, and in performance. We will use this case study as a basis to consider the impact of adapting large-scale and complex texts on public perceptions of quality children’s literature.

John Stephens

Department of English, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

Performativity and the Child Who May Not Be a Child

While children’s literature remained predominantly humanistic throughout the “theory era” (roughly, 1960 to 1990), some of the principal concerns of that era entered children’s literature in the last decade of the twentieth century: fragmented subjectivities, difference, contingency, the gendered body. During the first years of the twenty-first century these concepts have been swiftly augmented by a new range of concepts–the cyborg, virtual reality, technoculture, cloning, genetic engineering. In short, children’s literature has begun responding to the idea of the posthuman and accessing the two areas most commonly linked to the posthuman: biological interventions into the human body–cloning, genetic manipulation, “test-tube” creation of human life–and cybernetic interventions that either modify the human body or fashion artificial life in its evolutionary image. The “children” produced under these conditions challenge our concepts of humanity and posthumanity: if such a child performs childhood, and that performativity embodies subjective agency, why is she/he/it not a child? The paper will examine Judith Butler’s argument that performativity offers a model of agency that bypasses the classic opposition of free will and determinism, and go on to ask what this emergent concern in children’s literature suggests about the nature of childhood in contemporary technoculture.

Robert Munsch

Guelph, Ontario

Language, Literacy and Storytelling

Author of more than thirty picture books, which have sold more than 25 million copies worldwide, speaking about how language, literacy and storytelling interact in the construction of his his texts for children.

Margaret Mahy

Lyttelton, New Zealand

Phoenix award winner Margaret Mahy will talk about the place of Catalogue of the Universe in her writing at the award banquet. According to Margaret Mahy,

"It has been exciting for me to think Catalogue of the Universe is getting such wonderful recognition. It has always been a secret favourite of mine for various reasons."