A Study of Principles and Criteria of Rewriting in Children and Young Adult Literature(Case Study: Rewritings of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh)

This paper is a study of principles and criteria of rewriting in children and young adult literature in Shahnameh's rewritings. To this end, some books and articles on language learning and stages of child's linguistic development, as well as psychology of education, developmental psychology, elements of fiction and story-writing for children were studied in order to gain information about needs and interests of children and young adults. Some criteria were identified and defined in three parts: linguistic, content (educational) and technical (story-writing methods). Then, the rewritings published based on Ferdowsi's Shahnameh for children and young adults were selected and analyzed based on the above- mentioned criteria. The obtained results show that in the linguistic area, writers have simply focused on simplifying the language of the original text without considering the language features and abilities of their readers at different age groups. In the content area, most of the writers have focused on the mental, emotional and social characteristics of their readers, but technically, there is less creativity in rewritings considering the original text. The writers have rewritten the stories based on the original text and just in simple language.