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However, we do not have to make binary choices between books and the new media. The many software products and electronic books on the market indicate that the various media complement each other: if books stimulate internal images and provide the opportunity to pause and reflect, interactive media demand intellectual engagement, develop creativity, and give children control in mediating the text. Far from making children passive recipients of the story, these technological innovations challenge them to interact with the virtual environment of the text at many levels—practicing basic skills and critical thinking, experimenting with storytelling, and manipulating the plot and characters. As Warren Buckleitner wrote in the September 1997 issue of Children’s Software Review, the real attraction to children is not the fancy technology that the computer can offer, but the opportunity “to be in the driver’s seat of the experience, not to sit passively and be entertained” and this experience is valuable if it “can foster feelings of competence, ownership, and imagination” (“Letter from the Editor”). Not only have the new media expanded the forms and functions of children’s books, but they have also challenged educators to develop new teaching methodologies, researchers to explore theoretical implications, and writers and illustrators to seek new forms of creativity in this collaboration between books and technology. This dialog between children’s books and new technologies is just beginning. I thank guest editor Claire L. Malarte-Feldman, associate professor of French at the University of New Hampshire, for her assistance in editing the focus articles for this issue.
Yours sincerely, Introduction Claire L. Malarte-Feldman Computers, CD-ROMs, the Internet, television programs, cinema, and Disney adaptations are various forms of technology that present new challenges to traditional children’s books. I do not believe that books will some day be replaced by computers, but it cannot be denied that the multifaceted forms of technology at school and at home shape the minds of young readers in ways that deeply alter their relationship with books and the world. This issue of Bookbird focuses on the influence of technological innovations upon children’s books and conveys the unequivocal message that technology has undoubtedly changed the status of children’s literature. Multimedia techniques facilitate a plural approach to children’s fiction, enabling literature to function at many levels of communication and meaning because multimedia always give a visual representation of the written word and often let the reader interact with the text. There are inevitable consequences for the future of literature. Hans-Heino Ewers’s article on the interrelation between books and modern entertainment media summarizes the whole issue: “from being a relatively homogenous cultural product, children’s literature has become fragmented and shifting.” Rosemary Ross Johnston, in her examination of the links between literacy and literature, concludes that technology has most definitely changed our literacy habits. Manuel Gándara makes the case that today it is often computers that help children feel comfortable around books. Multimedia also blur the traditional distinctions between genres, as is the case with children’s avant-garde theater: Anne Cirella-Urrutia’s article shows that television programs like Sesame Street borrow some of the traditional techniques of puppetry and that the differences between audiences are blurred as well. In his analysis of The Planet of Junior Brown, Keith Mehlinger eloquently argues that adaptations of books for the screen provide new images with a clear departure from literature and yet, in this particular case, with a great respect for the spirit of the book. Adaptations of books for the screen do not have to be univocal and one-dimensional as in the case of Disney’s versions of classical tales. It comes as no surprise that Walt Disney is mentioned frequently throughout this issue. How could it be otherwise in a post-literate age when children from many parts of the world identify Winnie the Pooh or Cinderella as Disney’s own creations before they even hear of A. A. Milne’s or Charles Perrault’s existence? Jean Perrot’s and Suzanne Rahn’s articles focus on the “art” of the Disney empire to appropriate traditional narratives and adapt them for the modern multimedia adepts. Rahn examines the transpositions of Disney’s own revisited tales into the three-dimensional world of the rides at Disneyland, where intertextuality functions at multiple levels. Margaret Mackey emphasizes the impact of television upon young viewers: she traces Arthur the Aardvark’s transformation—and influence on children—from a literary creation to the popular hero of a daily TV show and a webpage to an ActiMate doll, a talking, interactive toy created by Microsoft. The ludic function of multimedia in children’s literature engenders the triumph of toys and the child’s desire for interaction. But the modernity of toys communicating with humans is not as great as one would think. Andersen and Collodi, among others, already knew all that. We carry into the new millennium the ancient motto of Western literature, divertir et instruire (“to entertain and to educate”), a precept that also guided Perrault when he wrote his Contes. We now talk of the “edutainment industry, where no entertainment exists without its educational component” (Mackey). The more things change, the more they stay the same. “Three digital-age concepts underpin and permeate all the radical changes that are taking place in literature for youth: connectivity, interactivity, and access.” —Eliza T. Dresang, Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age
Letters To the Point: children’s literature and the media Changing
Functions of Children’s Literature: New Book Genres and Literary
Functions Literature
Resists Film: A Case Study of The Planet of Junior Brown Snow
White’s Dark Ride: Narrative Strategies at Disneyland The
Literacy of the Imagination Computers:
Aids or Enemies of Reading?: A Matter of Judgment Other
Voices Regular Features Focus
IBBY International Children’s Books of Note Professional Literature News and Announcements |
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