Adaptations of the Persian Miniature Schools into Children's book illustration based on the Shahnameh

Some book illustrator artists use the legendary works and schools of the past to build their visual storytelling in order to maximize impact on their audience and connect with the book's theme, a technique called as adaptation. Persian Painting, being one of the most beautiful aspects of Iranian-Islamic culture, has served as a rich source of inspiration for modern children's book illustrators. The current study seeks to understand the approach and method of adaptation by children's book illustrators from Persian miniatures, as well as to identify the intertextual relationship between the works and schools of Persian Painting, while taking into account the role of adaptation in the postmodern perspective. To this goal, 15 contemporary children's books with the Shahnameh themes were chosen, which have adapted from Persian Miniature in their illustrations. This article also seeks to answer the following questions: What has been the method of adaptation in these works? Which schools of Persian Miniature have the artists of these works adapted from?The research was carried out in a descriptive manner, with information gathered from library sources. The study of the examples revealed that the illustrators created their works by adaptation on and being influenced by prior paintings, changing previous works to match with the book's content and theme, and doing so in their own distinct artistic style. In this process, they used three collage techniques: designing by adaptation from a single work or the works of a specific school, and adapting from themes or general features of Persian Painting. The Artists in adapting from schools of miniature painting for the contemporary kids, the artists did not limit themselves to a certain period of art, including adaptations from Seljuk period paintings, the First School of Tabriz, Herat school, Shiraz school in the Turkmen period, the Second School of Tabriz, the School of Isfahan to lithographs and paintings of the Qajar period are observed.