KEEPING THE HEART OF THE STORY
The adaptation process varies from publisher to publisher; sometimes a new writer adapts the script, sometimes the artist does all the work, and the original author is usually involved as well. Editors and adapters have to balance the old and the new, keeping the essence of the book while translating it to a new medium. “It’s a bit of an editing process,” Saylor says, “in terms of what are the important notes that you want to hit and what things do you need to have in the book and what things can you leave out.”
It wasn’t difficult for Grabenstein, who wrote the script for the adaptation of Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library. “He said he knew how to tighten it and where: things that have never been mentioned in fan letters were the things that he deleted as he was writing the script,” Corey recalls. “He was like, ‘No one has ever said that was their favorite scene.
Out it goes!’ ”
On the other hand, Osborne was initially reluctant to allow the Magic Tree House books to be adapted, Nagler says. “It wasn’t a slam dunk, because Mary is really thoughtful about the Magic Tree House world. When she decided she wanted to do it, she jumped in with two feet.”
One thing that helped: adapters Kelly and Nichole Matthews were fans of the books when they were kids, and the enthusiasm they brought to the project helped bring it to life.
Because many of the series currently being adapted are older, the editors and adapters are often longtime fans. Leopard read the Sweet Valley books when she was growing up, and the Baby-Sitters Club books were favorites of Raina Telgemeier’s, a fact she happened to mention in a casual conversation with Saylor and editor Janna Morishima 20 years ago.
“We had already been thinking we were going to adapt them,” Saylor says. “It was just a matter of finding the right artist. As soon as we heard that Raina had grown up with them and loved them, we were like, ‘You’re the right person to adapt this!’ ”
Other adapters simply resonate with the original, as Victoria Ying did with Paula Danzinger’s Amber Brown books. “Paula had an amazing throughline right to kids’ emotions—the happy things as well as the sad and hard things,” Kochan says. “And we were lucky enough to find Victoria, who had that same through line to her inner child.”
For Chouhan, who has adapted not only Whatever After but also Roshani Chokshi’s Aru Shah and the End of Time, the key is to keep it loose and let the reader use their imagination, just as they would if they were reading prose. “You can’t overthink it,” she says, “because it’s going to come across as very stiff. I’m not extremely detailed with my art in my graphic novels, so there’s still that kind of wiggle room where a kid reading this might be able to imagine what happened between panel one and panel two.”
In the end, Saylor says, “with the right people and the right minds behind it, you can adapt pretty much anything.” ■