As critical study of adapted texts moves away from a focus on fidelity to
explore questions of adaptive practice, picturebook to film adaptation offers unique
opportunities to redirect discourse related to the value of adaptive changes. Because
feature-length films made from children’s picturebooks require filmmakers to add
substantial content, they open discussion of how adaptive changes engage key ideas
related to children’s literature more broadly, including dual audience, didacticism,
and aetonormativity. This essay explores how these concepts transform in picturebook
to movie adaptation, drawing on two family films made from iconic
picturebook source texts—Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax (1971) and Chris Van Allsburg’s
Jumanji (1981)—to posit that added content foregrounds adult presence within the
story and participation in viewership far more than in the films’ picturebook
counterparts, positioning adults as learners while at the same time reinforcing adult/
child hierarchies.

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• Unless Someone Like You’’ Buys a Ticket to this Movie: Dual Audience and Aetonormativity in Picturebook to Film Adaptations