A productive approach for young children of adapting Jules Verne's classic novel Journey to the Center of the Earth was found for HOT DIGGETY DAWG (1995), a segment of the highly popular half-hour PBS children's series WISHBONE. Wishbone is a Jack Russell terrier, enlivening his mundane life by imagining himself cast in famous stories--essentially a beginner's version of the old "Classics Illustrated" comic books.
Each WISHBONE episode presents two parallel tales, alternating back and forth. In the prosaic framing story, Wishbone is an ordinary family pet, providing an anthropomorphized canine perspective, while in the inset story he becomes an appropriately costumed canine, enacting a lead in a classic tale. Retaining the body of a dog in Wishbone's daydreams as he interacts with people as if he were one of them echoes the desire of small children to be treated as "grown-ups" and be able to live the seemingly freer possibilities of adult experience.
In HOT DIGGETY DAWG, written by Jack Wesley and directed by Fred Holmes, digging a hole for an Arbor Day tree allows Wishbone to imagine himself as Professor Lidenbrock in a series of Verne's incidents with Axel (Jonathan Brent) and Hans (Matthew Thompkins), including giving his last mouthful of water to Axel.
Back on the surface, the children are fascinated with a gold medallion that Wishbone has dug up. Returning to the story of Journey to the Center of the Earth, the discovery leads to an underground river inside the rocks, to relieve the explorer's thirst. The explorers are thrown out of the volcano in Italy when the family accidentally digs into a water pipe.
In a staple of this series, at the conclusion Wishbone narrates several minutes showing how the special effects were created to depict Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth--an unusually direct acknowledgment of the fictional nature of the story. This lack of pretense allows HOT DIGGETY DAWG to succeed in simultaneously telling two separate but complimentary stories. HOT DIGGETY DAWG cleverly and charmingly conveys the novel's tone and plot in a series of vignettes, overcoming its brevity.
Each WISHBONE episode presents two parallel tales, alternating back and forth. In the prosaic framing story, Wishbone is an ordinary family pet, providing an anthropomorphized canine perspective, while in the inset story he becomes an appropriately costumed canine, enacting a lead in a classic tale. Retaining the body of a dog in Wishbone's daydreams as he interacts with people as if he were one of them echoes the desire of small children to be treated as "grown-ups" and be able to live the seemingly freer possibilities of adult experience.
In HOT DIGGETY DAWG, written by Jack Wesley and directed by Fred Holmes, digging a hole for an Arbor Day tree allows Wishbone to imagine himself as Professor Lidenbrock in a series of Verne's incidents with Axel (Jonathan Brent) and Hans (Matthew Thompkins), including giving his last mouthful of water to Axel.
Back on the surface, the children are fascinated with a gold medallion that Wishbone has dug up. Returning to the story of Journey to the Center of the Earth, the discovery leads to an underground river inside the rocks, to relieve the explorer's thirst. The explorers are thrown out of the volcano in Italy when the family accidentally digs into a water pipe.
In a staple of this series, at the conclusion Wishbone narrates several minutes showing how the special effects were created to depict Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth--an unusually direct acknowledgment of the fictional nature of the story. This lack of pretense allows HOT DIGGETY DAWG to succeed in simultaneously telling two separate but complimentary stories. HOT DIGGETY DAWG cleverly and charmingly conveys the novel's tone and plot in a series of vignettes, overcoming its brevity.
