Translation and adaptation of terror: two books for children and teenagers on 9/11 15th anniversary

Abstract

After the 9/11 attacks to the Twin Towers, the literary world witnessed the publication of a huge and varied quantity of books for children and teenagers, from picture books to more traditional texts, all of them illustrating an event which would become a turning point in world’s history and set its course towards a new world order. Fifteen years on, there is a young generation quite unaware of the events, even questioning that they really happened and were not part of a Hollywood disaster movie. Authors themselves wonder if the memories they hold have not already become but blurred images of that day. It is the aim of this paper to show how literature translates and adapts the events of that September morning to those who were not yet born or too young to understand the abrupt end of the past century.