In a Nutshell, or transforming childness through music across media: Maurice Sendak's Nutshell Library and all the Really Rosies.

This article examines the role of music in adaptation through the case study of Maurice Sendak's 1962 Nutshell Library—comprising four concept books—and its transformations into the 1975 animated television special Really Rosie and the 1980 Broadway musical adaptation. It argues that music intensifies emotional engagement, structures narrative sequence, and reshapes representations of childness and childly agency across media, highlighting how adaptations of children's texts reveal varied models of agency linked to their medium: books emphasize choice, TV invites active participation, and stage fosters intergenerational collaboration. The analysis shows that music not only enhances early childhood literacy lessons but also disrupts conventional binaries between word and image, diegetic and nondiegetic sound, and literature and film, positioning adaptation as an interart phenomenon. By focusing on children's media, the article underscores music's unique capacity to constitute the subject and transform the experience and meaning of adapted texts.