Dystopian novels for young people and their readers

Abstract

In this study, the effects of film adaptations on reading the original books are examined. The genre chosen was dystopian novels, which have been a great success in recent years, with many of them having been adapted to cinema. The first part of the research described was a questionnaire survey sent to a sample of 400 people with the aim of exploring whether those who watch a film adaptation would read the novel on which the adaptation was based. It was found that, unfortunately, the answer is negative, and that it is the other way round: those having read the book will be more interested in watching the film. In the second part of research, European public libraries were requested to send their lending data regarding the books in question, and it was investigated whether the lending number of a book would increase after the premiere of its film adaptation. The answer is positive: it can be clearly seen from the data that, due to the adaptation, more people are becoming interested in the original book. In summary, however, it can be concluded that books and their film adaptations have an effect on each other.