IRSCL 2013 – Take Two

Sylvia Warnecke

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In her welcome note to delegates Lies Wesseling, conference convenor, draws the attention to the main focus of the event: ‘children’s literature within the dynamic ‘ecology’ of its adjacent media’ and states that its aim is to ‘illuminate not only the form and content of the artefacts under study, but also the behaviours of their producers and consumers, roles that are being radically redefined’.

And indeed, many studies referred to Jenkins’ seminal concept of a participatory culture, where producers’ and consumers’ roles are increasingly blurred and where the production and consumption of literature in its many forms influence each other. However, it was interesting to see in the debates that there is an increasing awareness of producers and consumers being lured and at the same time dominated by the affordances of the new media. Many delegates described how we at times lose sight of a main concern, which ‘isn’t what the media are doing to our children but rather what our children are doing with the media’ (Jenkins).

That is why many stimulating analyses of children’s book apps or e-books highlighted a contradiction: the majority of such digital forms of storytelling lags behind the experience a young reader might have when reading  a ‘traditional’ (picture)book, as was proven convincingly by Kristin Ørjasæter in the case of the Norwegian Stian Hole’s Gramann picturebook trilogy. Ørjasæter reported the fascinating story how the author/graphic designer/illustrator Hole actually gave up on the project of remediating his own picturebook series into apps, because he realized that these limit rather than enhance his reader’s understanding of his stories. Ørjasæter demonstrated how technology, as it is largely used to date, often pre-determines where the reader might ‘venture’. The conference underlined many “wreaders’” calls for apps of the 3.0 generation, which avoid exactly that and open up the reading experience by  creating reading paths  based on the concept of the semantic web. The semantic web here understood as providing ‘a more productive and intuitive user experience’. In close connection with such pleas were the concerns expressed by delegates that much of what children nowadays access as ‘new digital forms of storytelling’ are commercially produced and marketed outputs of globalized mass-media corporations that offer bland  and uniform rather than stimulating and individualised reading experiences.

Regarding trends in the field of children’s literature within ‘the dynamic ‘ecology’ of its adjacent media’, the conference offered more questions than answers. In my view it could only draw attention to the next big task of children’s literature research, which is to investigate how we tell stories and make meaning in the 21^st century and which effect this has on the readers and producers of these stories. It was interesting to see that research today has not yet developed a terminology that captures what we can observe happening in cyberspace. To me this emphasizes that research is at a crossroads. Annette Wannamaker’s paper on born digital narratives (something more inventive and progressive than fan fiction) was a perfect example of cutting edge research that investigates e-literature for children created with multi-media platforms. Her presentation of the inanimate alice project as one of the few genuinely born digital participatory narratives for children was a plea for careful critical attention to such new forms. Wannamaker’s study pointed out the current paradigm shift that is leaving a number of scholars and educators behind due to the fact that such texts ‘little resemble the texts we are used to studying  – they are experimental, avant-garde, creative, postmodern […] works’.

This suggests that we have to look beyond the affordances of fast-changing media and search for common threads, recurring themes, and returning patterns but also develop an understanding of radical forms of expression in what constitutes the stories of our time, told with the media of our time. A large part of this new task of research is awareness-raising – also for the power of adaptation. As Jean Webb confirms, the focus on (emergent) literacies and the close links between children’s literature research, cultural and media studies as well as education has to be strengthened in order to stay in tune with what is happening with the objects of their research.

IRSCL 2013 – Take One

 by Jean Webb

The 21st International Research Society for Children's Literature Conference, 'Children's Literature and Media Cultures' 2013 was very efficiently convened and hosted by the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, Maastricht University, Maastricht. Having attended most of the IRSCL conferences over the past twenty years I cannot recall one which was so heavily influenced by literacy and educational approaches. Perhaps this was because the subject of media lent itself to discussion of the contemporary place of the book, approaches towards reading and the impact of media in relation to literacy. Although a most enjoyable experience from the perspective of a literary scholar in the field, one would have hoped for more literary discussion in the keynote lectures. Nonetheless it was interesting to learn about what is currently available in terms of electronic texts for children. I was hoping that there would be some breakthrough in terms of the materials available which in some way really did use the technology to open up exciting and stimulating ways of reading. Julia Eccleshare has rightly commented upon the lack of imagination applied to date by those who are producing electronic texts when asked to give her informed opinion at various venues. The 'cutting and pasting' of picture books into electronic format does little more than give some support to reading processes, but then the reader is principally made to work at the pace of the format. So there was some critique at IRSCL of the productions to date.
What was lacking in the 'literacy' keynote talks was the critical awareness of the implications of culture, power and control, which was surprising. Perhaps they felt that IRSCL was not the platform for such discussion. It did arise in some of the sessions, for instance those papers given by Branwen Bingle and Sandra Williams, both of whom are teacher educators. It led me to thinking that perhaps there are currently two camps in teacher education: those who perhaps comply with National Curricula and government dictats, or maybe are too immersed in the immediate practicalities of literacy and those who look beyond such barriers and rail against such and call out for a critical thinking educational approach. The conference did highlight the space between the two. The experience confirmed the political awareness of IRSCL colleagues which was displayed in exemplary manner in Prof Kerry Mallan's keynote which interrogated the political and moral power of young adult literature and which is also reflected in her latest publication Secrets, Lies and Children’s Fiction. Her argument was that 'children's literature along with other forms of children's media employs disinformation (or lies, gossip, and other harmful stories) as a narrative strategy to draw readers into the moral or ethical dimension of this practice of telling lies.' Kerry's keynote discussed the current state of civil observation, i.e. that western culture has 'Big Brother' looking over every shoulder. A salutary warning of which I hope and trust colleagues in teacher education are fully aware.

Learning from fictional readers

Maria Nikolajeva

Two masters students this year wrote their theses about portrayal of readers and reading in children's books. They were not aware of each other's topics, nor did they know anything about the Reading Fictions project. Apparently it is an attractive topic. Masters students in children's literature are typically passionate readers. If you are a passionate reader you are likely to empathise with fictional readers. And you may wish to be like them. But it has its dangers, as Kim Reynolds pointed out last week.

The Russian national epic, Eugene Onegin, by Alexander Pushkin (better known in the West as an opera), which we had to endure in school just as English schoolchildren have to endure Shakespeare, features such a passionate reader. The thirteen-year-old female character, Tatiana, is technically what we would today call an adolescent, but socially no more so than the Bennet sisters, since she is available for marriage. Isolated at her parents' country home in the beginning of the 19^th century, she finds company in books, and her favourite author is Samuel Richardson. When we read Onegin in school, age thirteen, we had no idea about Richardson, who could just as well be a fictitious writer. Yet we were curious about the books, which the condescending narrator calls “dangerous” for young girls' imagination. To Pushkin's contemporaneous readers, Richardson's novels were well known and apparently represented bad taste suitable for sentimental young ladies, but equally misleading about harsh reality. The narrator states explicitly that Tatiana was diluded by “the fictions of the British muse”. She identifies with the novel heroines and imagines herself as one of them. As a fatal result, she falls in love with the neighbour gentleman, the cynical Onegin, writes him a love letter – as a romance heroine would – is rejected and marries the first best man who proposes to her. No happy endings in Russian classics.

As thirteen-year-old girls, we identified with Tatiana and imagined ourselves as her, with a firm belief that, unlike her, we would never be rejected by the object of our affection. Did we learn any more from books than Tatiana did?