A01=Rebecca Rowe
American studies
Author_Rebecca Rowe
Category=ATFA
Childhood studies
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Fans and fandom
forthcoming
Media adaptation
Media audiences
Screen media
Product details
- ISBN 9781399540087
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 31 Oct 2026
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
This book examines contemporary adaptations of children’s literature to illuminate two interconnected trends in twenty-first-century US culture: the courting of adult consumers by children’s media industries and the shift in American cultural conceptions of adulthood.
Using the double meaning of kidult (an audience designation and a description of a person) as a framework, Adapting American Adulthood explores how the representation of adulthood changes when texts move from the child-focused world of the children’s book to the more adult-focused world of kidult screen media and fandoms.
In studying this shift in implied audience, this book argues that children’s media companies began appealing directly to the kidult, rather than to the adult-as-parent, at the moment when the ideal adulthood sold to Americans since the 1940s started to crumble. This book examines how this shift has led to Americans reimagining an adulthood that leaves room for childness and children’s media
Rebecca Rowe is Assistant Professor of Children’s Literature in the Department of Literature and Languages at East Texas A&M University and founding editor of the International Journal of Disney Studies.
