Non-Print Literary TextsLCN617—Children’s Literature: Criticism and Practice. 2015.Erica Hateley – erica.hateley@qut.edu.au

http://youtu.be/pQHX-SjgQvQ

Bibliophilia vs. Love-of-reading

My name is Erica. I am a bibliophiliac.

I also love literature!

Books (the codex as has predominated for recent centuries) are a technology of recording, organising, preserving, and making accessible, information / content

Text is content.

So: books are the means, texts are the ends.

But… My own bibliophilia is connected with a long and deep relationship with “books” signifying the means and the ends. The codices which fill the geographies—real and remembered—of my life provide me with connections to the past, present, and future, and to my sense of self.

For me, technologies such as computers, iPads, iPods, etc. etc. are always-already “less than” codices… they provide me access to literature, but they are always measured against the codex.

I share these points only in an attempt to be honest, and as “proof” that I am involved in an ongoing project of thinking through non-traditional-print media incarnations of children’s literature. (see, for example, Hateley; Nixon & Hateley)

e‐books, audio, and apps (oh, my!)…

These texts can be seen as operating well beyond the purview of schooling or home institutions;

At the same time, their increasing popularity and market shares mean that libraries are increasingly expected to mediate these forms and to enable access to—and mastery of?—such texts.

In a wider sense, tech such as tablets, “raises a lot of questions with regards not only to how children will be reading, but how they will view, understand, or relate to the action of reading” (Al-Yaqout 63)

Electronic Versions of Print Books

“app” versions of children’s books

Engaging and Understanding…

E-books—the same (identical?) to codices… the story is written in the same way (narrative, narration, etc.)

Apps / interactive e-books—added issues of manipulating textual and/or visual elements. This sometimes (but not necessarily always) extends the narrative world…

The Heart and the Bottle (2010)

The Heart and the Bottle for iPad

Rules of Summer – page and screen

Pros and Cons?

New, flexible, and dynamic understanding of “books” and of reading

What “counts” as literacy knowledge and capabilities may become more inclusive and child-centred

“The new multimodal literature for children offers vast opportunities for consumers, but it also does not want the consumers to think too much about what they are reading/viewing […] It would be a mistake to assume that the new technologies that entail developing new literacies are necessarily detrimental to the young. Technologies and inventions such as the television, computer, cell phone, computer game, portable media player, and so on are not by themselves dangerous or insidious. What is significant is how they are put to use by corporations that produce and sell them and how they are used by the consumers.” (Zipes 25)

Having a story read to you…

If e-books seek to extend and adapt the history of print-based literacy, how do we understand audio adaptations? After all, for many people, first encounters with narrative are through aural consumption of oral texts.

“A voice is not abstract. It conveys information about gender, region and class; it has timbre and cadence […] A silent reader lifts the words off the page into awareness by dint of his or her own rhythms of breath and speech, even if only at the level of subvocalization. A listener hears, as a substitute, the breath and voice of narrator and actors.” (Mackey 116)

“even today, listening to an actor read a book on tape as we drive down the highway—the ceremony of being read to no doubt deprives the listener of some of the freedom inherent in the act of reading—choosing a tone, stressing a point, returning to a best-loved passage—but it also gives the versatile text a respectable identity, a sense of unity in time and an existence in space that it seldom has in the capricious hands of a solitary reader.” (Manguel 123)

2 Audio-book Experiences…

As ever, this is subjective, but each of these works took on a new kind of life when I listened to them as audio-books rather than as print-based books.

In each case, there were high production and performance values, but I suspect it is also to do with the ways in which the narratives each engage explicitly with questions of hearing versus listening (especially being able to hear something that noone around you can hear), and with the sanctity of interiority as a condition of being human. As such, the experience of listening to these stories, in the intimate realm of headphone-wearing was profound. On Blackboard, I’ve posted 2 quotations (1 from each

novel). I encourage you to take a few minutes to listen to each.

Challenges for Librarians

When technology and content are two separate entities (where print codex is one), how do libraries acquire, manage, re-stock one or both elements?

Can existing collection development policies and practices “absorb” e-texts? Do they need to be re-written / re-thought?

Shelving and cataloguing?

Access for patrons?

Should libraries be “obliged” to provide the access-tech? Or, should patrons be expected to have their own computer/tablet/mp3 player, etc.?

“If device ownership has anything to do with it, children’s books may lag behind trade publishers for quite a while. Why? The poverty line.

According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, as of 2010, some 44% of children live in low-income families. That number has increased from 40% in 2005. By comparison, 15.1% of Americans live in poverty as of September 2011, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Children make up a disproportionate number of the poor.” (Greenfield)

apps / proprietary e-books (e.g. DRM)

How “long” does a library “own” one or more copies? (Bearing in mind that with most digital content, you are not buying the content but a licence). See: http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/889452-264/harpercollins_caps_loans_on_ebook.html.csp

Corporate policies and practices—e.g. recent news around amazon.com’s approach to ‘managing’ thorny pricing issues: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/amazon-pulls-thousands-of-e-books-in-dispute/

Not to mention…

“In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindledevices of readers who had bought them.

An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.

[…] Digital books bought for the Kindle are sent to it over a wireless network. Amazon can also use that network to synchronize electronic books between devices — and apparently to make them vanish.” (Stone)

The punchline? The books removed included George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Discussion Prompts

Tell us about your text; but don't limit yourself to plot. How did you access it? Are you new to the particular technology? Are you already a long-term user? What is the same and what is different about reading in print and non-print forms?

If at all, does your encounter with the non-print text change your understanding of “children’s literature”?

What might the implications of new and diverse modes for publishing literary texts have for collection development in libraries?

Should libraries be “obliged” to provide the access-tech? Or, should patrons be expected to have their own computer/tablet/mp3 player, etc.?

What are the EXTRA considerations when you have to balance these very broad concerns with policies of any tech use in a school? With very young patrons?

How does the circulation of non-print literary texts impact on shelving and cataloguing practices?

Works Cited:

Al-Yaqout, Ghada. “From Slate to Slate: What Does the Future Hold for the Picturebook Series?” New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship 17.1 (2011): 57-77.

Greenfield, Jeremy. “When Growth in Children’s E-Books Hits the Poverty Line.” DigitalBookWorld.com March 14, 2012. Online. Available at: http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/when-growth-in-childrens-e-books-hits-the-poverty-line/

Hateley, Erica. “Reading: From Turning the Page to Touching the Screen.” (Re)imagining the World: Children’s Literature’s Response to Changing Times. Eds. Yan Wu, Kerry Mallan, and Roderick McGillis. Berlin: Springer, 2013. 1-13.

---. “Touching Texts: Adaptations of Australian Picture Books for Tablets.” Picture Books and Beyond. Ed. Kerry Mallan. Newtown: Primary English Teaching Association Australia, 2014. 108-122.

Mackey, Margaret. “Media Adaptations.” The Routledge Companion to Children’s Literature. Ed. David Rudd. London: Routledge, 2010. 112-124.

Manguel, Alberto. A History of Reading. New York: Penguin, 1996.

Nixon, Helen and Erica Hateley. “Books, Toys, and Tablets: Playing and Learning in the Age of Digital Media.” International Handbook of Research on Children's Literacy, Learning, and Culture. Eds. Kathy Hall, Teresa Cremin, Barbara Comber, and Luis C. Moll. London: Wiley, 2013. 28-41.

Stone, Brad. “Amazon Erases Orwell Books from Kindle.” New York Times July 17, 2009. Online. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html

Zipes, Jack. Relentless Progress: The Reconfiguration of Children’s Literature, Fairy Tales, and Storytelling. New York: Routledge, 2008.