Film and Children’s Literature: An Aesthetic Evaluation of Doug Atchison’s Akeelah and the Bee

Abstract: The paper undertakes a study of Film and Children’s Literature; an Aesthetic Evaluation of Doug Atchison’s Akeelah and the Bee (2005). To achieve this, the interrelationship between film and literature is established, and the concept of children’s literature is also examined. The paper employs formalism as a theoretical framework through which the various literary elements in the movie are surveyed. Thus, formalism as a framework is used in this paper to emphasise literary form and the study of literary devices employed in the movie above its context. The paper thus concludes that film, like a written text, possesses the literary elements that qualify it to be studied as literature. However, film, unlike written text, employs an audio-visual mechanism through aesthetic representation to engage the audience or viewers. In this case, the selected movie reflects children’s literature, as the plot structure, characters, setting, and theme all reflect, to a large extent, a literary text meant for children.