Chapter 20
Where does the “meta” go in adapting children’s metafiction to the screen?
The case of “A Series of Unfortunate Events”
Article outline
- Considering the metafictional source: Daniel Handler’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
- Metafilmic adaptation:
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
(2004)
- Explicit meta-adaptation: Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
(2017)
- Conclusion
-
Notes
-
References
References
Anstey, Michèle
2002 “
‘It’s Not All Black and White’: Postmodern Picture Books and New Literacies.”
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 45 (6): 444–457.
[URL].


Austin, Sara
2013 “
Performative Metafiction: Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler and The End of A Series of Unfortunate Events
.”
The Looking Glass: New Perspectives on Children’s Literature 17 (1).
[URL].

Bayer, Gerd
2010 “
On Filming Metafiction: John Fowles’s Unpublished ‘The Last Chapter’ and the Road to Postmodern Cinema.”
English Studies 91 (8): 893–906.


Buchbinder, David
2011 “
From ‘Wizard’ to ‘Wicked’: Adaptation Theory and Young Adult Fiction.” In
Contemporary Children’s Literature and Film: Engaging with Theory, edited by
Kerry Mallan and
Clare Bradford, 127–146. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.


Bullen, Elizabeth E.
2008 “
Power of Darkness: Narrative and Biographical Reflexivity in A Series of Unfortunate Events
.”
International Research in Children’s Literature 1 (2): 200–212.


Butt, Bruce
2003 “
‘He’s Behind You!’: Reflections on Repetition and Predictability in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.”
Children’s Literature in Education 34 (4): 277–286.


Cadden, Mike
2005 “
Children’s Stories (Narratives Written for Children).” In
Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, edited by
David Herman,
Manfred Jahn, and
Marie-Laure Ryan, 59–60. New York: Routledge.

Cartmell, Deborah
2007 “
Adapting Children’s Literature.” In
The Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen, edited by
Deborah Cartmell and
Imelda Whelehan, 167–180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Cartmell, Deborah and Imelda Whelehan
2005 “
Harry Potter and the Fidelity Debate.” In
Books in Motion: Adaptation, Intertextuality, Authorship, edited by
Mireia Aragay, 37–49. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Cox, Carole
1982 “
Children’s Films: The Literature Connection.”
Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 7 (3): 10–13.


Dällenbach, Lucien
1989 The Mirror in the Text. Translated by
Jeremy Whiteley and
Emma Hughes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dresang, Eliza T.
1999 Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age. New York: H.W. Wilson.

Ebert, Roger
2004 A Review of “
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.”
Roger Ebert, December 16.
[URL].

Eidsvik, Charles
(1974) 1977 “
Soft Edges: The Art of Literature, the Medium of Film.” In
Film and/as Literature, edited by
John Harrington, 306–313. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Geraghty, Christine
2008 Now a Major Motion Picture: Film Adaptations of Literature and Drama. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Geraghty, Christine
(2009) 2012 “
Foregrounding the Media: Atonement (2007) as an Adaptation.” In
A Companion to Literature, Film, and Adaptation, edited by
Deborah Cartmell, 359–373. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.

Goldstone, Bette P.
2001–2002 “
Whaz Up with Our Books? Changing Picture Book Codes and Teaching Implications.”
The Reading Teacher 55 (4): 362–370.
[URL].

Handler, Daniel
1999a The Bad Beginning. New York: HarperCollins.

Handler, Daniel
1999b The Reptile Room. New York: HarperCollins.

Handler, Daniel
2000a The Wide Window. New York: HarperCollins.

Handler, Daniel
2000b The Miserable Mill. New York: HarperCollins.

Handler, Daniel
2001 The Vile Village. New York: HarperCollins.

Handler, Daniel
2006 The End. New York: HarperCollins.

Hauthal, Janine
2009 “
When Metadrama is Turned into Metafilm: A Media-Comparative Approach to Metareference,” In
Metareference in the Arts and Media: Theory and Case Studies, edited by
Werner Wolf, 569–589. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Hintz, Carrie and Eric L. Tribunella
2013 Reading Children’s Literature: A Critical Introduction. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s.

Hutcheon, Linda
1980 Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. New York: Methuen.

Knickerbocker, Joan L. and Martha A. Brueggeman
2008 “
Making Room on the Shelf: The Place of Postmodern Young Adult Novels in the Curriculum.”
American Secondary Education 37 (1): 65–79.

Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina
2013 “
Paratexts in Children’s Films and the Concept of Meta-Filmic Awareness.”
Journal of Educational Memory, Media, and Society 5 (2): 108–123.


Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
2004 Dir.
Brad Silberling. Film. Paramount Pictures.

Lewis, C. S.
(1950) 1998 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. London: HarperCollins.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
2005 Dir.
Andrew Adamson. Film. Walden Media, Walt Disney Pictures.

Mackey, Margaret
1990 “
Metafiction for Beginners: Allan Ahlberg’s ‘Ten in a Bed.’”
Children’s Literature in Education 21 (3): 179–187.


Mallan, Kerry and Clare Bradford
2011 Contemporary Children’s Literature and Film: Engaging with Theory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.


Martin, Cathlena
2009 “
Charlotte’s Weblog: Media Transformation and the Intertextual Web of Children’s Culture.” In
Adaptation in Contemporary Culture: Textual Infidelities, edited by
Rachel Carroll, 85–95. London: Continuum.

McAllister, Cheryl
2009 “
Oversimplification in the Adaptation of Children’s Literature to Film.” Master’s Thesis. University of Alberta, Canada.
McAlone, Nathan
2017 “
Critics Say Netflix is Bad for Movies: Here’s What They are Missing About its Strategy.”
Business Insider, May 22.
[URL].

McCallum, Robyn
2008 “
Would I Lie to You? Metalepsis and Modal Disruption in Some ‘True’ Fairy Tales.” In
Postmodern Picturebooks: Play, Parody, and Self-Referentiality, edited by
Lawrence R. Sipe and
Sylvia Pantaleo, 180–192. New York: Routledge.

Moss, Joyce and George Wilson
eds. 1992 From Page to Screen: Children’s and Young Adult Books on Film and Video. Detroit, MI: Gale Research.

Nelson, Claudia
2006 “
Writing the Reader: The Literary Child in and Beyond the Book.”
Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 31 (2): 222–236.


Netflix Subscriber List
2017 “
Coming soon … an extremely upsetting new show from Netflix.” January 6. Email.
Nikolajeva, Maria
1998 “
Exit Children’s Literature?”
The Lion and the Unicorn 22 (2): 221–236.


Nikolajeva, Maria and Carole Scott
2001 How Picturebooks Work. New York: Garland.

Ousley, Laurie
2007 “‘
Well-Read People are Less Likely to be Evil’: Intellectual Development and Justice in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
.” In
To See the Wizard: Politics and the Literature of Children, edited by
Laurie Ousley, 297–314. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.

Pantaleo, Sylvia
2004 “
Young Children Interpret the Metafictive in Anthony Browne’s Voices in the Park.”
Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 4 (2): 211–233.


Pantaleo, Sylvia
2005 “
Young Children Engage with the Metafictive in Picture Books.”
Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 28 (1): 19–37.

Pantaleo, Sylvia
2006 “
Readers and Writers as Intertexts: Exploring the Intertextualities in Student Writing.”
Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 29 (2): 163–181.

Pantaleo, Sylvia
2009 “
The Influence of Postmodern Picturebooks on Three Boys’ Narrative Competence.”
Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 32 (3): 191–210.

Pantaleo, Sylvia
2010 “
Mutinous Fiction: Narrative and Illustrative Metalepsis in Three Postmodern Picturebooks.”
Children’s Literature in Education 41 (1): 12–27.


Pantaleo, Sylvia
2014 “
The Metafictive Nature of Postmodern Picturebooks.”
The Reading Teacher 67 (5): 324–332.


paramitch
2016 Untitled comment on Ebert, Review of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
. October 14.
[URL].
Philpot, Don K.
2005 “
Children’s Metafiction, Readers and Reading: Building Thematic Models of Narrative Comprehension.”
Children’s Literature in Education 36 (2): 141–159.


Russell, Danielle
2010 “
Familiarity Breeds a Following: Transcending the Formulaic in the Snicket Series.” In
Telling Children’s Stories, edited by
Mike Cadden, 22–43. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.


A Series of Unfortunate Events
2017 Dir.
Barry Sonnenfeld Mark Palansky and
Bo Welch. Television. Netflix.

Singerman, Alan J.
2001 “
Jacques le fataliste on Film: From Metafiction to Metacinema.” In
Eighteenth-Century Fiction on Screen, edited by
Robert Mayer, 123–138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Robert Stam
1992 Reflexivity in Film and Literature: From Don Quixote to Jean-Luc Godard. New York: Columbia University Press.

Robert Stam
2005 Literature through Film: Realism, Magic and the Art of Adaptation. Oxford: Blackwell.

Sutherland-Smith, Wendy
2002 “
Weaving the Literacy Web: Changes in Reading from Page to Screen.”
The Reading Teacher 55 (7): 662–669.
[URL].

Sutton, Roger
2004 “
‘The Red Book’ and ‘Into the Forest’: Metafiction for Beginners.”
The New York Times Book Review, November 14.
[URL].

Tartaglione, Nancy
2017 “
A Fest Divided: Netflix Controversy Clouds Cannes; Will France Embrace Change?”
Deadline, May 19.
[URL].

Tiffany, Kaitlyn
2017 “
Netflix CEO Addresses Cannes Controversy: ‘Sometimes the Establishment is Clumsy.’ He also called Netflix ‘the insurgents.’”
TheVerge, May 31.
[URL].

Trites, Roberta Seelinger
1994 “
Manifold Narratives: Metafiction and Ideology in Picture Books.”
Children’s Literature in Education 25 (4): 225–242.


Waugh, Patricia
1984 Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. New York: Methen.

Wojcik-Andrews, Ian
2000 Children’s Films: History, Ideology, Pedagogy, Theory. New York: Garland.

Voigts-Virchow, Eckart
2009 “
Metadaptation: Adaptation and Intermediality – Cock and Bull.”
Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance 2 (2): 137–152.


Young, Brian Patrick
2011 “Cinematic Reflexivity”: Postmodernism and the Contemporary Metafilm. PhD Diss. University of California Davis.

Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Hunter, Madeleine
2019.
In Medias Res: The Remediation of Time in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. In
The Palgrave Handbook of Children's Film and Television,
► pp. 75 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 march 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.