Around the World in 80 Days: Jules Verne’s Novel in its Contemporary Adaptations

Abstract

This article explores Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in 80 Days through its printed adaptations for children published within the last fifteen years. More specifically, it examines cases in which the well-known story of the novel is reshaped into picturebook form, in order to highlight how a classic literary work is transformed so as to meet the needs and abilities of today’s child reader. The study draws on a theoretical framework that includes scholarly approaches to adaptation and Stephens & McCallum’s theory of metanarratives, as well as related discussions of the multimodality of adapted literary works and the role of the image as a narrative code equivalent to the verbal text.