Around the World in 80 Days and the Information Imperative in Jules' Verne Oeuvre; Contemporary Transformations into Children's Non-Fiction

Abstract

This study looks into how Verne’s landmark novel Around the World in Eighty Days is transformed into a hybrid multimodal work, prompting “the reader to decode other ‘languages’ while transforming reading into a hypertextual activity” (Hallet 2015, p. 64) and turning into an education tool for teaching geography, the natural sciences, and culture. In other words, we examine the processes and modalities through which a work of fiction is ‘transformed’ into a nonfiction informational book, as the new versions of the text deliberately interweave fictional narrative and an explicit cognitive dimension. Drawing on the analytical model proposed by Nina Goga for the approach of nonfiction books for children and young adults, and the reading positions these books construct, in combination with Stephens and MacCallum's theory of retellings and metaethic, we explore the following questions: How is knowledge organised and what is the role assigned to the reader? What kinds of images are presented and how do they function in synergy with the text? What is the metaethic inscribed in these adaptations, particularly in relation to the educational role they assume?