The detecting child TKKG and adapting fair play for young audiences

Abstract A key rule of the classic detective genre is the doctrine of fair play, according to which readers should have access to the same information as the detective in order to have the opportunity to solve the mystery as the detective does, or to even beat them to it. Through presenting the reader with a mystery, suspects, and clues, the narrative invites the reader to participate with the in-text detectives to solve the crime depicted. It is this ludic nature that makes the whodunit genre particularly appealing to child-readers. Additionally, through playful approaches to form, ‘children’s texts tend to stress interactivity in ways that other texts do not’: children’s texts are frequently as ‘physical and kinetic’ as they are ‘cognitive and emotional’. Children’s detective fiction not only makes visible the genre’s inherent interactivity, which challenges the reader to engage in detective behaviour, but may intensify the genre’s immersive potential through children’s literature’s own unique affordances. When these detective stories are translated to a different medium, the narrative elements of stories which invite interactivity must also be changed in order to maintain fair play, which is fundamental to the functioning of detective stories. Therefore, this article focuses on the ways through which different media adapt the inherent interactive and ludic nature of children’s detective fiction through an analysis of the audio dramas and board game adaptations of the popular TKKG series, both underserved by adaptation studies and children’s and media studies.