"He Realized the Shabbiness of His Own Self": The Politics of the Illustration of Children in Twain's Adaptation Network

Abstract: This essay offers close readings of 1885 illustrations of Huck Finn, a used 1960s mass-produced coloring book, and Philip Stead and Erin Stead's The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine , a children's book adaptation of archival notes of a bedtime story that Mark Twain told his daughters. In considering what these illustrations require of the child in poverty as well as what meaning this text invites a child reader to make, this essay uses adaptation theory to illuminate intersectional differences that might otherwise go unnoticed and that show—quite literally—a precise hierarchy of class and race even as authors and illustrators claim a politically neutral text.