Hyperread: Children's Literature, CD-ROMs, and the New Literacy

Clark addresses what happens to Children's Literature when selected texts are adapted to digital format. She provides an introduction to new media theory and its effect on the narrative experience, advances the elements of a theoretical framework for understanding the movement of Children's Literature texts to hypertext and hypermedia, and applies this to an analysis of children's print text adaptations. The analysis focuses on three new media texts, in CD-I and CD-ROM formats published by Philips Media, of three popular children's print texts: the first is Aesop's Fables and the subsequent two were created in conjunction with the series' authors of The Berenstain Bears and The Baby-sitters' Club. The examination integrates digital theory into a description of the technical and analytic processes that aided the transformation of these children's books.