Through the Looking Glass: Children’s Books on Screen

This chapter focuses on children’s films that depict ‘bookishness,’ both in adaptation and otherwise, to develop a ‘grammar’ of film techniques for doing so (as shown in mise en scène, editing, cinematography). This chapter uses many examples to illustrate that children’s film effectively employs a wide range of techniques for showing ‘bookish’ plots, characters, setting, themes, and symbols. These techniques are fruitfully employed in film adaptations of metafictions at the story level. Techniques discussed include title cards, intertitles, and subtitles; opening (with) the book; voicing the narrator; thematised readers and writers; embedding the book’s story; the lap dissolve; shifts from still to moving image; and metaphors for metalepsis (windows and mirrors). The chapter further discusses ekphrasis and shows how the interpretant functions. The chapter presents a case study on Harry Potter books 2 and 6, and their film adaptations: The Chamber of Secrets, and The Half-Blood Prince.