Kid E-Lit
elektronisk litteratur for barn og ungdom
The Kid E-lit exhibition is part of The Electronic Literature Organization's annual conference for 2015, ELO 2015: The End(s) of Electronic Literature, held in Bergen 4-7 August 2015. The exhibition will be on display at Bergen Public Library in August and September 2015. Further information about the Kid E-Lit project: http://www.kidelit.dk. The ELO 2015 conference website: http://conference.eliterature.org/2015 Complete programme: https://elo2015.sched.org/ Editors: Jill Walker Rettberg & Lucas Ramada Prieto Translations: Jill Walker Rettberg Layout & Design: Hüvard Legreid, Bergen Public Library Thank you to the authors and publishers for permission to exhibit works and to print screenshots. Š2015
Table of contents Introduction Innledning
5 5
Typomatic Mrs. Wobbles and The Tangerine House Poetracking The Tower of Jezik My Own Alphabet The Computer Wore Heels
11 13 15 17 19 21
Electronic Literature in Denmark Tavs Wuwu & Co
25 31 33
Electronic Literature in Finland Moomin, Mymble and Little My Taro at the Center of the Earth
35 41 43
Electronic Literature in Norway Kubbe lager skyggeteater Jakob og Neikob
45 51 53
Electronic Literature in Sweden Alla barns rätt The Sailor’s Dream
55 59 61
CONTENT
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Introduction Jill Walker Rettberg & Lucas Ramada Prieto Literature for children and young adults has always been a fertile ground for creative innovation. To create artistic works for children is a challenge that has never been seen as a limitation, but allows for a specific mode of literary creation that has given birth to countless works that measure up to the greatest texts of literature for adults. Image and text have been allies since the days when picture books were established as the paradigmatic genre of children’s literature. Children’s literature has always shown a distinctive and innovative impulse towards media innovation, from picture books to pop-up books and tactile interfaces for reading. Now, digital media have opened up new possibilities for literary creation. Innledning Jill Walker Rettberg & Lucas Ramada Prieto Barne- og ungdomslitteratur har lenge vært et område for nyskapning og kreativitet. Billedbøker lar tekst og bilder jobbe sammen på en måte som sjeldent tillates i voksenlitteraturen. Medieinnovasjonen innen barne- og ungdomslitteratur omfatter ikke bare billedbøker men også utbrettsbøker, uvanlige formater, bruk av forskjellige papirtyper og i dag også bruken av datamaskinen og nettbrettet som nye leseplattformer.
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The Kid E-Lit exhibition held at Bergen Public Library in conjunction with The Electronic Literature Organization’s 2015 conference and literary arts festival, ELO 2015: The End(s) of Electronic Literature is sponsored by the Nordic Culture Council as part of a broader project to introduce electronic literature made for children and youth to wider public audiences. The exhibition showcases six works selected by a jury from open submissions to ELO 2015 as well as eight Nordic works, selected by a network of scholars of children’s and young adult’s literature and electronic literature. A full list of collaborators is available at the end of the catalogue.
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Utstillingen «Kid E-Lit» eller barn-e-litt holdes ved Bergen offentlige bibliotek i samarbeid med Universitetet i Bergen og med The Electronic Literature Organization, som holder sin årlige konferanse og festival i Bergen i 2015, ELO 2015: The End(s) of Electronic Literature. Utstillingen og denne katalogen er i tillegg støttet av Nordisk kulturråd. I utstillingen kan du se seks verk som er valgt ut blant innsendte bidrag til ELO 2015, og åtte nordiske verk som er valgt ut av et nettverk av forskere på elektronisk litteratur og barne- og ungdomslitteratur i Norge, Sverige, Danmark og Finland. Du finner listen over alle våre samarbeidspartnere og bidragsytere bakerst i katalogen. Vi håper at vi gjennom å presentere et utvalg elektronisk litteratur for barn og unge kan gjøre flere oppmerksomme på de gode og nyskapende litterære opplevelsene som skapes for barn og unge i digitale medier. Enten du er lærer, bibliotekar, forsker, forelder eller bare er nysgjerrig, håper vi at du finner noe nytt her.
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The popularity of mobile media and tablet computers has created a new and engaging platform for electronic literature, or e-lit, for children and young adults, and it has also provided a commercial marketplace where both traditional publishers and independents artists and authors are flourishing. At the same time we recognize a divide between scholars and critics coming out of children’s literature studies on the one hand and electronic literature on the other, which this project hopes to begin to bridge. These two fields have very different backgrounds but also very strong commonalities. Both the picture book and electronic literature challenge the very notion of literature. What is literature? How dependent is the literary on the written word? How can we understand text in combination not only with images, as in picture books, but also with other modalities, the spatial, the haptic, the interactive, the multimedial?
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We are beginning to see some crossover between children’s literature studies and electronic literature studies. The Nordic Journal of Childlit Aesthetics has published a number of papers on electronic children’s literature over the last few years, and in the field of electronic literature we are seeing more research being done on children’s literature, as evidenced by panels at ELO 2015. We hope this exhibition and catalogue will help support further collaboration between the avant-garde territories of electronic literature and the cutting edge of new reading technologies for children. In the following you will find works that are close descendants of traditional, paper-based children’s literature as well as works that explore the possibilities of the medium to a greater extent. We hope that these examples will open up new modes of thinking about future literary forms for the readers who are our future.
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Installation Gå inn i en fotoautomat. Justér krakken, lag et dikt og vent mens det skrives ut til deg. Denne poesiautomaten er en litterær installasjon som spiller på Pierre Fournys teknikk poésie à 2 mi-mots, som vi på norsk kanskje kan kalle halvordspoesi, eller poesi mellom linjene. Teknikken går ut på å skjære ord i to horisontalt og sette dem sammen for å skape nye ord. Etter femten års varisjoner på konseptet i digitale og papirbaserte formater forener poesiautomaten det digitale med papiret, og spiller på forholdet mellom kunst og maskin.
#ELO2015
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Typomatic
#ELO2015
Pierre Fourny, Guillaume Jacquemin, Serge Bouchardon, Luc Dall’Armellina and Hélène Caubel, 2015
Step into a photobooth for poetry. Adjust the stool, create a typopoem and wait as it is printed for you. This is the Typomatic, a literary installation created in collaboration between members of the French performance art group ALIS, scholars and students from the University of Technology of Compiègne, and the interactive design studio Buzzing Light. The poetry is based on the Poésie à 2 mi-mots, a technique invented by Pierre Fourny in 2000 that could be translated into English as two half-words poetry or between the lines poetry or cutting edge poetry. This technique plays with the shapes of letters: words are cut in two horizontally and positioned so that a new word emerges from the originals. Fourny developed software for this but most presentations have used paper, objects and videos, allowing readers to forget the digital processing involved. With the Typomatic, the Poésie à 2 mi-mots combines the digital with the pleasure of paper, offering visitors a printed typoticket. The work plays with the relationship between art and machine, reminding us of the playfulness that the original photo booths engendered. Read more at www.typomatic.org
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Denne samlingen med interaktive fortellinger er skrevet for barn som kan lese selv, og kombinerer humoristiske, fortellende tekster med valg og spill-lignende elementer, som poesipoeng og nivåer. Fortellingene kretser om Mrs. Wobbles, som kanskje er heks og som styrer et magisk fosterhjem for barn. Gjennom valg kan leserne hjelpe fosterbarna gjennom eventyr og helbrede gamle sår. Fortellingene er skrevet av Mark Marino i samarbeid med hans åtte- og tiårige barn. Brian Gallagher er illustratør. Web
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Mrs. Wobbles and The Tangerine House This anthology of interactive children’s stories is designed for middle grade readers. The stories grow out of a magical foster care home run by a woman who may or may not be a witch. These choice-based tales combine textual narrative with gamelike options, and are digital descendents of the Choose-YourOwn-Adventure gamebooks that became popular in the 1980s. The progress points in the sidebar also encourage a playful style of reading. The stories are full of humorous situations and offer children the chance to make tough choices and help these foster children through their adventures and in the process heal old wounds. The Mrs. Wobbles stories are written by Mark Marino in collaboration with his ten-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son. Illustrations are by Brian Gallagher. Mark Marino and The Marino Family http://markcmarino.com/mrsw, 2013-2015
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Du blir bedt om å tegne et tre. Når du er ferdig, kommer et dikt tilsyne på skjermen, generert ut fra Baums personlighetstest som tolker en pasients personlighet og følelser ut fra hvordan han eller hun tegner et tre: en tykk stamme tyder på styrke og høy selvfølelse mens en tynn stamme tyder på en introvert med lav selvfølelse. Poetracking kan leses som en kritikk av personlighetstester, men også som en kommentar til overvåkningssamfunnet hvor våre valg på nettet i økende grad tolkes og selges som fasiter på våre personligheter. Web
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Poetracking Jorge Andrés Gomez, Baptiste Ingrand, and Florine Morsetin, 2014
Poetracking asks you to draw a tree, and uses your drawing to generate a short poem. After a few moments, your poem and drawing disappear, and you are shown the many trees drawn by others, each alongside its generated poem. The project draws from the Baum personality test, which aims to show a patient’s main personality traits and emotions by analysing the way he or she represents a tree on a sheet of paper. For instance, small trunks indicate introversion and low self-esteem, while large trunks imply strength, higher self-esteem and vitality. By only analysing a few aspects of the user’s drawing (colours, line width and position on the page), Poetracking highlights the weaknesses of the Baum test, and is designed to point out how subjective it can be. Rather than simply convert the user’s perceived emotions and personality traits into raw data, as is done by Facebook and other entities for advertising and surveillance purposes, Poetracking converts the data into poetry, itself open to further interpretation. A lyrical feedback is generated through the openness and subjectivity offered by the generated poem that can be seen as reconfiguring the reader’s whole interaction.
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Emilie Barbier, Ana Abril Hernández, Leja Hočevar, Luis Javier Pisonero and Mario Aznav, 2014: http://digitalliterature.eu/portfolio/the-tower-of-jezik/
iBook Denne hypertekstfiksjonen for tenåringer er en utforsking av språket og dets umulighet. Handlingen foregår i en middelaldersk fantasiverden hvor en ung gutt våkner uten språk etter et fall, og må finne det mytiske Tårnet av Jezik for å løse forbannelsen og bringe språket tilbake til sitt folk. Jezik er inspirert av eventyrbøker men forsøker også å kombinere en lineær fortelling med litterære grep som er spesifikke for elektronisk litteratur, som hypertekst og tekstanimasjon.
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The Tower of Jezik This hyperfiction for teenagers primarily questions language and its possible inefficiency. Set in an imaginary world, the reader follows a young boy who sees an old man brewing something in a cauldron and believes he is in fact a wizard about to cast a spell. The old man sees him spying and the boy falls from his window, hits his head and loses consciousness. When he wakes up, he can no longer understand what people are saying and, convinced that the villagers were indeed cursed by a powerful sorcerer, he sets out to find the mythical Tower of Jezik and bring language back to his people. Unlike many hypertext fictions, Jezik has a clear storyline, but uses other strategies to resist the reader. Partly inspired by ChooseYour-Own-Adventure books, the authors set out to create a work that could fit in the standards of current publishing while playing with various media and rhetorical devices specific to electronic literature, such as patterns of hyperlinks and text animation.
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My Own Alphabet er et kinetisk dikt om uorden, om å lære nye ting, om å glemme detaljer og om å se verden fra nye og uvante vinkler. Diktet ser kanskje rotete ut for deg som leser, men forfatteren ser det ikke slik. Aleatory Funkhouser er en tiåring fra USA. Web
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My Own Alphabet Aleatory Funkhouser, 2015
My Own Alphabet is a motion poem about disorder, learning new things, forgetting details and seeing from new and different perspectives. The poetry may look jumbled, but does not to the author. Aleatory Funkhouser is a ten year old student from the USA who is interested in experimental poetry.
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LeAnn Erickson, 2014
iPad
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The Computer Wore Heels The Computer Wore Heels is an interactive book app for the iPad that shares the little known story of a group of female mathematicians, some as young as18, who did secret ballistics research for the US Army during WWII. A handful of these human ‘computers’ went on to serve as the programmers of ENIAC, the first multi-purpose electronic computer. The app is based on the documentary film Top Secret Rosies: The Female Computers of WWII (LeAnn Erickson 2010), and aims to bring this story to younger students in the hopes of giving today’s teens role models that might encourage them to study math, science and computer science. The app’s design resembles a girl’s diary from the 1940s with the narrative unfolding as an adventure story. Readers may access primary research documents such as original WWII era letters, photographs and mathematical equations actually completed by the story’s subjects. There are also numerous audio and video clips that expand on story plot points or events. Denne interaktive dokumentaren om unge, kvinnelige matematikere under annen verdenskrig bruker materiale som tekst, videoer, brev, fotografier og matematiske formler for å fortelle om et stykke historie. Appen er basert på Ericksons dokumentarfilm om samme tema. #ELO2015
Nordic electronic literature for children and young adults Nordisk elektronisk litteratur for barn og ungdom
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Children’s Electronic Literature in Denmark Martin Campostrini and Ayoe Quist Henkel As in the other Nordic countries, digitized picture books or enriched e-books are the most common form of electronic literature for children in Denmark. One of the largest publishing houses in Denmark has a line of e-books called “Listen and Read” that presents itself to worried parents as being books “like in the good old days”. Examples of digitized picture books include Drengen der ville smage en kebab, Cirklen og andre cirkeldigte, Tak for halshugningen and Troldeliv. Denmark also has a number of innovative examples of digitally native literature that are created specifically for digital devices and that experiment with narrative forms and aesthetic strategies. Danish electronic literature for children is a creative meeting place for authors, illustrators, animators and interaction designers, combining popular culture and the avante-garde. Rather than being an established commercial genre, this work largely depends on digital “con-amore” artists and often state-supported arts funding. Collaboration and the multimodal is so important that the Danish author Merete Pryds Helle suggests that literature in apps should be compared to drama rather than to novels: the production is as important as the letters on the page and cooperation between several fields of expertise is necessary.
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Most digitized and digitally native literature for children in Denmark is targeted to nursery and kindergarten children, and it often builds on already known characters and universes. These apps are more likely to have been produced by the marketing department than by editors and writers of children’s books, and the literary value is often found to be lacking. As a contrast to such commercial apps, you will find a few examples of apps demonstrating genuine narrativity and affinity to traditions of children’s literature and children’s fiction in general. This category includes varieties from remediated fairy tales of strong visuality and limited interaction as in Charlies eventyr as well as stories without words but with voicing, animations and high interaction. They often prompt different reading methods, paths, and types of interaction. An example of high interaction and exploration of the physical room occurs in Wuwu & Co. Another example of high interaction is the app Hej min soI, where the child has to nod or shake his head to the camera to decide which way the story will go — with limitations.
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In Denmark electronic literature for children often operates between computer games and children’s stories and is presented as books as well as apps. They have a strong degree of multimodality and they integrate various art forms and sensory appeals, with strong visual, auditory, and tactile dimensions. Sofus og månemaskinen is an app that moves between the strong tradition of nonsense in children’s lyrics and the (animation) movie, between the narrative of a protagonist on a journey and the quest structure of the computer game, and between transparency and meta consciousness to the medium. In Sofus og månemaskinen the reader has to collect things, shake a part of a sky rocket from a tree, light some candles, get Sofus through a labyrinth and so on in order to help Sofus save his planet. The app is about survival and existence, light and darkness, life and death. At a point there is a game sequence where the reader has to lose the game in order to continue. This is an ironic commentary on the game format, playing with the reader. It also illustrates the situation of electronic literature for children: it tries out different artistic strategies and tries to find or redefine itself as children’s literature. It reflects on itself and asks: what are the artistic modes of expression in electronic literature for children? What is the dialogue between children’s electronic literature and paper-based children’s literature, in particular picture books, and other media? One answer could be that experimental and unstable modes are the very characteristics of children’s electronic literature. DENMARK
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Som i de andre nordiske landene er digitaliseringer av eksisterende billedbøker den vanligste formen for elektronisk litteratur for barn i Danmark. Men det er også en rekke eksempler på innovativ digitalt først barnelitteratur som utforsker fortellerformer og estetiske virkemidler. Disse verkene er oftest kollaborative og kommer utenfra forlagsverdenen, skapt av idealister og ofte med statlig kunststøtte. Noen, som Charlies eventyr, har sterk visualitet og lite interaktivitet, mens andre, som Miki, forteller en historie uten ord men med animasjoner og mye interaktivitet. Noen har svært utforskende interaksjon, som Wuwu & Co, hvor man beveger på nettbrettet for å utforske fiksjonsverdenen, eller Hej min sol hvor barnet må nikke eller riste på hodet til kameraet for å styre fortellingens gang. Mange verk kombinerer elementer fra dataspill og barnebøker, og det er en sterk multimodalitet. Sofus og månemaskinen er en app som følger barnelitteraturens nonsenstradisjoner men også har dataspillets quest-struktur, slik at leseren må samle ting og løse problemer for å hjelpe Sofus til å redde planeten sin. I dens ironiske vridning av spillformatet gjør Sofus og maskinmaskinen at vi må tenke gjennom hva elektronisk litteratur for barn kan være. Et mulig svar er at den eksperimentelle og ustabile formen nettopp er det viktigste trekket ved den elektroniske barnelitteraturen.
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Kim Langer & Mårdøn Smet: Drengen der ville smage en kebab (Rosinante & Co. 2011) Thorstein Thomsen and Tea Bendix: Cirklen og andre cirkeldigte (Carlsen 2013) Andreas Nederland and Frederik Michael Hansen: Tak for halshugningen (Gyldendal 2013) Sissel Bøe and Peter Madsen: Troldeliv (Lindhardt & Ringhof 2014) Morten Dürr & Lars Gabel: Miki (Demibooks 2013) TwoPopes & Rasmus Jensen: Charlies eventyr (Appmonk 2014) Merete Pryds Helle, Kamilla Slocinska, Tim Garbos & Aksel Køie: Wuwu & co. (Touchbooks 2014) Merete Pryds Helle, Malte Burup / Thomas Åkerlund: Hej min sol (Riktam Technologies 2015) Malte Burup, Kasper Sebastian Brandt Jensen, Pelle Skovmand & Mikkel Vedel: Sofus og månemaskinen (The Outer Zone 2015)
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Denne manga-inspirerte grafiske romanen handler om 13-årige Tavs, eller på norsk, Taus, som sluttet å snakke da hans tvillingbror døde og familien flyttet til Tokyo. Denne fantasifortellingen handler om ensomhet og tap, men også om humor og kjærlighet. Tekst blandes med musikk, stillbilder, lydeffekter og animasjoner: når vi leser om Tavs sorg og frustrasjon faller ordene nedover skjermen inntil leseren tar tak i dem. Dette er vakker og variert elektronisk ungdomslitteratur.
DENMARK
iPad
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TAVS
This manga-inspired graphic novel app is about thirteenyear-old Tavs, who chooses his name (meaning “silent”) when he writes a declaration to his parents: “From now on I will be silent”. The story is about the loneliness and loss Tavs feels upon the death of his twin and his family’s move to Tokyo. TAVS is a fantasy narrative with gothic, humorous and boy-meets-girl elements and references to haiku and manga. The app mixes text, music, still images, sound effects and animation into an immersive aesthetic experience. For example, as we read of Tavs’ sorrow and frustration the words begin to fall down from the screen and the reader has to take an active part in the reading process by grabbing the sentences. The chapters show great variation, operating between expressive, powerful animations and stills and black pages, between strong sound effects and silence and between spoken and written words, right up to the final fight between the twins; between life and death. Camilla Hübbe, Rasmus Meisler & Stefan Pasborg - Høst & Søn, 2013
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iPad
Når lesebrettet ligger flatt leser du historiene til Wuwu og de andre dyrene i det lille røde huset i skogen, men når du løfter brettet opp blir det til et vindu inn i en tredimensjonal fiksjonsverden hvor du kan hjelpe dyrene å løse sine problemer. Du rister på brettet for å riste snøen av et tre, roper høyt for å vekke Gregers søsken og må peke kameraet på noe gult i den virkelige verdenen for å tenne lysene til mørkeredde Storm og hans familie. Merete Pryds Helle er kjent som en pionér innen dansk elektronisk og hybridlitteratur, og denne appen har fått skryt av anmeldere for den kreative balansen mellom rolig, passiv lesing og en lekende deltagende modus hvor leseren bruker hele kroppen. Merete Pryds Helle, Kamilla Slocinska, Tim Garbos & Aksel Køie, Touchbooks, 2014
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Wuwu & Co
When your iPad is lying down you can read or listen to this story about animals who live in a red house, during the coldest winter in 2000 years. When you pick up the iPad, it becomes a window into a 3D rendition of the fictional world, and you need to phisically move to pan through the world. Each of the creatures in the house has a short story, and for each story you need to interact with the iPad to help solve the creature’s problem: shake it to get the snow down from a tree; shout into it to wake up Gregers’ siblings; or find a yellow color with the camera to turn on the lights in the dark winter night. Merete Pryds Helle has, alongside her work as a novelist, been a pioneer in the field of Danish electronic literature or hybrid literature, and wrote several successful computer games in the 1990s. In this millennium she has been the first to introduce Danes to SMS novels, an app novel (The Funeral, 2011), and an electronic calendar novel (Mikkels mareridt, 2014). With its clever use of the tools offered by the iPad, Wuwu places the reader in a tension between the written and imagined on one side and the animated, interactive and visible on the other side. The reader has to both join and separate the physical reality of the body and the reality on the screen, which heightens the awareness of both.
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Merete Pryds Helle, Kamilla Slocinska, Tim Garbos & Aksel Køie: Wuwu & Co Touchbooks, 2014
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Children’s Electronic Literature in Finland Paula Halkola, Raine Koskimaa & Katri Niskanen In Memoriam Seita Vuorela 1971-2015 Traditionally, Finland has been a country of avid readers and library users. The number of titles and copies of books published annually is very high, especially when looked at per capita. Many of the books published are translations (in recent decades, increasingly from English), but the share of Finnish titles remains high. A number of Finnish authors have broken through to the international market, and many of them are authors of children’s literature, the best known example being Tove Jansson with her Moomin books. In the digitalization of literature, however, Finland has not been anywhere near to the front runners. In 2013, only some 30% of all new book titles were available as e-books, and the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Library System housed a total of 70 e-book titles for children. There are no comprehensive listings of socalled enriched e-books (or, apps) available, and the libraries mainly do not have them in their collections at all, because of technical and IPR issues. The history of Finnish electronic literature started with poetry generators programmed for PC’s by Arto Kytöhonka in 1980’s, and in the 1990’s a few WWW-based literary works — both fiction and poetry — were published. These works were mainly self-published by the authors, and many of the early works are no longer available. FINLAND
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Leevi & Jukka Lemmetty: Isän poika, Tapisodes / 'Lasten Keskus, 2011
During 1990’s multimedia works on CD-ROM were published, often by major publishing houses. Some of these titles were aimed at children, and probably the most popular ones were multimedia adaptations of the Moomin picture books, with various interactive and game elements. These titles were also purchased by libraries, and some of them are still available for browsing in the library computers. In the 2000’s there were some experiments with electronic publishing, such as print-ondemand childrens’ books where the names of the main characters could be selected by the customer, and print books with online extensions. There could be additional materials related to the book, or reader discussion forums linked to the book. Karikko (The Reef) by Seita Vuorela (Nordic Council Children and Young People’s Literature Prize 2013) as well as some of Vuorela’s other young adult novels (written together with Niina Repo) have had a related website. FINLAND
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DibiTassut (The DibiTales) is a cartoon series, with the original storyline written by the wellknown author Tuija Lehtinen, and the further story development crowd-sourced to the audience globally. As part of the DibiTassut franchise, some experiments with augmented reality have been conducted. One of the DibiTales books, as well as a few magazines with DibiTales-related content, included a QR code, which allowed the reader to see and interact with a 3D DibiTales character through a web camera and a laptop. Mauri Kunnas: Menopelit Otavia, 2011
Aleksi Delikouras’ NÜrtti (The Nerd), a series of three novels, was initiated as a series of highly popular Youtube videos, before being turned into novels as well. The connection between the online videos and the novels has created a phenomenon in Finland, bringing many kids into reading who otherwise would probably not have taken a book in their hands. FINLAND
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In recent years, a small selection of (more or less) interactive applications for tablet devices with literary content for kids have been produced and published. Some of the best known and most popular Finnish authors (Tove Jansson, Mauri Kunnas, Aino Havukainen & Sami Toivonen, Timo Parvela) are involved, but the marketing of the apps has been very low-key. In 2013 Lasten Keskus, a publisher specializing in children’s literature, launched their Lasten e-Tarinat (Children’s e-Stories) Platform, which is an integrated book shop and reading application for iPad. Lasten Keskus has also collaborated with the international Tapisodes developer (eg. Isän poika [Papa’s Boy] by Leevi & Jukka Lemmetty).
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Finland er tradisjonelt et land av lesehester og ivrige biblioteksbrukere, og har også en sterk barnelitterær tradisjon. Det er mindre tradisjon for elektronisk og digitalisert litteratur. En relativt liten andel nye finske bøker er tilgjengelige som ebøker, og ebøker og barnebokapps er lite tilstede i bibliotekene. Men selv om elektronisk litteratur ikke er utbredt i Finland, verken for barn eller voksne, er det sterke eksempler på forfattere som bruker digitale medier. Arto Kytöhonka skrev poesigeneratorer alt på 1980-tallet, og på 90-tallet ble noen dikt og fortellinger utgitt både på web og på CD-ROM. Ungdomsromaner som Seita Vuorelas Karikko («revet») har et tilhørende nettsted, og tegneserien DibiTassut har eksperimentert med QR-koder som lar leseren samhandle med en 3D-animasjon av karakterene ved hjelp av webcam. Aleksi Delikouras Nörtti («nerden») begynte som en serie svært populære YouTube-videoer før fortellingen ble utgitt som en romanserie. Mange unge som ellers ikke leser bøker har funnet litteraturen gjennom denne serien. De siste årene er det utgitt noen få (mer eller mindre) interaktive barnebokapper, men markedsføringen har vært begrenset. De fleste av disse er digitaliserte versjoner av velkjente billedbøker, skrevet av populære forfattere som Tove Jansson, Mauri Kunnas, Aino Havukainen, Sami Toivonen og Timo Parvela.
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Mummi – Hvordan gikk det? er en digitalisering av Tove Janssons klassiske barnebok fra 1952. Boken er fortalt i rim og er bygd opp rundt forventninger. «Hva tror du at det hendte da?», spør teksten på hver side, og forventningen forsterkes av hullene som er skåret i boksidene slik at leseren kan titte gjennom til neste side. Den digitale versjonen etterligner hullene tildels og har lagt til noe interaksjon, og er oversatt til en rekke språk. Aschehoug er utgiver av den norske versjonen. iPad
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Moomin, Mymble and Little My
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Tove Jansson’s classic Moomin, Mymble and Little My (1952) is a picture book where each page has a cut-out hole that allows readers to peek through to the next page. The story is written in rhyming verse and is strongly based on anticipation: What will happen next to the Moomintroll on his trip to fill the milk churn? The iPad application based on the book was created by Spinfy, and published by WSOY in 2012. It has been translated into several languages and is claimed to be the best selling kid lit application in Finland, Norway and Sweden. The user can either read the text or listen to an audio recording. The cut-out holes of the original book are partially mimicked in the application, and interaction has three modes: tapping on the images launches small animations, often with related sound effects; turning the tablet device makes some of the picture elements swing or slide, and swiping at the edge of the screen allows one to turn pages. Tove Jansson Spinfy/WSOY, 2012
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Timo Parvela er i Norge mest kjent for Ella-bøkene, men denne appen, som er tilgjengelig på finsk og engelsk, er en digitalisering av den første boken hans om Taro. Fortellingen handler om Taro, en liten gutt, og bjørnevennen hans som reiser til jordens midte. Det romlige er utforsket på en måte som ikke er mulig i en bok ved at oppslagene (vakkert illustrert av Jussi Kaakinen) er sømløst knyttet sammen både horisontalt og vertikalt uten bokens skarpe skiller mellom sider. Bevegelsene opp og ned og fra venstre til høyre gir oss en følselse av å følge Taros reise med ham. iPad
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Taro at the Center of the Earth Timo Parvela & Jussi Kaakinen mobilive/WSOY, 2011
The Taro at the Center of the Earth iPad application is a digitized version of the popular Finnish childrens’ author Timo Parvela’s first book about the character Taro (2010). The story is about a little boy and a bear’s journey to the center of the Earth, and is delightfully illustrated by Jussi Kaakinen. Taro makes use of point-and-click adventure game conventions to create an experience which is still quite close to a print book, but it manages to evoke more of a sense of exploring a fictional space than turning print pages by its unusual use of the spatial screen space. The individual panes follow each other seamlessly in horizontal or vertical directions, depending on the movements of Taro and his bear friend, so there is no strong division between parts of the work, as is the case with book pages. The scrolling illustrations, which are only partially under the user’s control, help the user to identify with Taro in his exciting adventure, perhaps allowing for a tighter experience of emotion and immersion in the story. FINLAND
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Norwegian Picture Book Apps and Scholarship About Them Nina Goga Various forms of electronic literature for children have been created in Norway in the last five years, and a number of critics and scholars have proposed ways in which to understand this literature. The first discussions were about the relationship between books for tablets and books on paper, such as in Linn T. Sunnes' article (2012). Others tried to sort the apps according to degrees of digital complexity, as we see in Elise Seip Tønnessen’s articles (2012 and 2014). There have also been attempts at writing qualified reviews and literary criticism of the new form of childrens’ literature, such as Kristin Øyrjasæter’s article (2012) about Stian Hole’s Garmanns sommer and Kari Stai’s Jakob og Neikob, Atle Berge’s review (2015) of three new, Norwegian children’s book apps, and in Guro Bråten’s article (2015) about Åshild Kanstad Johnsen’s Kubbe lager skyggeteater. We also see discussions of how literary criticism of these works might look, for instance by Nina Goga (2013) and in an interview by Atle Berge (2014).
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Based on Tønnessen’s characteristics of the childrens’ book apps on the market, four categories have become commonly used. Visual audiobooks are little more than scanned versions of existing picture books and are frequently traditional, popular picture books by established authors and illustrators. Picture books with additional effects add new aesthetic dimensions like sounds and animations to digital versions of previously published paper books. Interactive picture books use aspects of gameplay to involve children, and often narrative is less featured. Digital first productions (equivalent to the English digital native) are created specifically for the tablet and are not based on a paper book. Åshild Kanstad Johnsen Gyldendal, 2013
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I Norge har det de siste fem årene blitt laget ulike former for bildebokapper. Flere fagfolk og forskere har presentert forslag til hvordan denne formen for digital litteratur skal forstås. De første innspillene dreide seg om forholdet mellom brettbøker og papirbøker, noe blant annet Linn T. Sunnes artikkel er et uttrykk for (2012). Andre forsøkte å sortere appene under ulike merkelapper basert på graden av digital kompleksitet. Elise Seip Tønnessens artikler (2012 og 2014) er eksempler på dette. Utover dette har det også vært gjort forsøk på å skrive kvalifiserte anmeldelser og omtaler av den nye formen for barnelitteratur og på å reflektere over hvordan den litterære kritikken av denne litteraturen ser ut. Eksempler på det første finner vi i Kristin Ørjasæters artikkel (2012) om blant annet Stian Holes Garmanns sommer og Kari Stais Jakob og Neikob, i Atle Berges anmeldelse (2015) av tre nye, norske bildebokapper og i Guro Bråtens artikkel (2015) om Åshild Kanstad Johnsens Kubbe lager skyggeteater. Eksempler på det andre finner vi i Nina Gogas artikkel (2013) og Atle Berges intervju (2014) med blant annet en litteraturkritiker som anmelder bildebokapper i dagspressen. Med utgangspunkt i Elise Seip Tønnessens karakteristikker av de ulike bildebokappene på markedet, er det blitt vanlig å sortere appene i fire ulike kategorier. Noen apper er nærmest bare skannete versjoner av eksisterende bildebøker og blir gjerne omtalt som visuelle lydbøker. Det finnes mange eksempler på visuelle lydbøker, men de fleste av disse er av mindre interesse om man er opptatt av hva som er nyskapende og utfordrende. Det er derfor kanskje også symptomatisk at mange av bøkene i dette formatet er tradisjonelle, og populære, bildebøker av etablerte forfattere og illustratører. Talende eksempler er Karsten og Petra-bøkene til Tor Åge Bringsværd og Anne Holt eller Kari Grossmanns Lillesøster-bøker. Andre apper har en tidligere utgitt bildebok i papirformat som forelegg, og forsøker gjennom ulike tilleggsfunksjoner, som lyd og animasjon, å tilføre den estetiske opplevelsen nye dimensjoner. Slike apper kalles gjerne bildebøker med tilleggseffekt. De mest omtalte eksemplene på slike er tidligere nevnte Garmanns sommer og Jakob og Neikob. NORWAY
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En tredje form for bildebokapp er slike som krever at leseren deltar aktivt i framdriften av boken. En vanlig betegnelse for slike apper er interaktive bildebøker. Appen Kubbe rydder opp av Kanstad Johnsen er et eksempel på en digital bildebok der leseren må ta del i hovedkarakteren Kubbes prosjekt – å rydde opp. Gjenstander må ryddes og sorteres i riktig boks og eske før Kubbe kan legge seg å sove. Et stort antall slike interaktive bildebøker ligger tett opp til ulike spill-konsepter og kan være mindre opptatt av narrative strukturer. En siste variant er bildebokapper som ikke har et papirbasert forelegg og som henter element fra ulike visuelle medier, som film, tegneserie eller spill. Slike blir på norsk omtalt som digital først-produksjon (på engelsk gjerne omtalt som digital native).
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Berge, A. 2015. Appkunst? På http://www.barnebokkritikk.no/ appkunst/#.VSuoqU10270 Berge, A. 2014. Den vanskelege barnebokapplikasjonskritikken. På http://www.barnebokkritikk.no/den-vanskelege-barnebokapplikasjonskritikken/#.VSupTk10270 Bråten, G. 2015. Kubbe-kunst. På barnebokkrtikk.no (in press) Goga, N. 2013. Teknologi eller estetikk? Hvordan vurdere bildebokapper. I Bøygen 3/13. s. 10-17 Prøitz L. og E. S. Tønnessen 2014. Tekstpraksis i mediesamfunnet. I E. S. Tønnessen (red.) Jakten på fortellinger. Barne- og ungdomslitteratur på tvers av medier. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. s. 20-38. Sunne, L. T. 2012. Er det en bok?. På http://www.barnebokkritikk.no/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=120 Tønnessen, E. S. 2014. Fra Bildebok til app, eller bare litterær app?. I E. S. Tønnessen (red.) Jakten på fortellinger. Barne- og ungdomslitteratur på tvers av medier. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. s. 128-148. Tønnessen, E. S. 2012. Bildebøker i et digitalt landskap. På http:// www.barnebokkritikk.no/bildeboker-i-et-digitalt-landskap/#. VSuoOE10270 Ørjasæter, K. 2011. «Digital, mediert og politisk barne- og ungdomslitteratur». Bok og Bibliotek 5/2011. Viktige fag- og forskningstidsskrift (online) barnebokkritikk.no blft.no NORWAY
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Et vellykket og komplekst eksempel på en digital først bildebokapp er Åshild Kanstad Johnsens Kubbe lager skyggeteater. I denne appen møter leseren ikke bare flere fortellinger flettet inn i hverandre, men også et gjennomført digitalt uttrykk som kler de ulike fortellingene. Rammefortellingen dreier seg om Kubbe som er på piknik med bestemoren og som blir nysgjerrig på hva en skygge egentlig er for noe. Via bestemorens fortelling om hvordan skyggeteateret på ble skapt i det gamle Kina, bestemmer Kubbe seg for å sette opp sitt eget skyggeteater – en spesielt vinklet versjon av Rødhette og ulven. Nettbrettets muligheter for baklys, for animasjon og for visuell romlighet utnyttes i denne appen på en måte som kler og fremhever de ulike fortellingenes estetiske egenart. iPad
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Kubbe lager skyggeteater In this digital first picture book app, the reader encounters several interwoven stories connected by a thoroughly digital aesthetic that suits the different stories. The frame narrative centres around Kubbe, an anthropomorphic wooden log (kubbe is Norwegian for log) who is having a picnic with his grandmother and becomes curious about the shadows he sees. Upon hearing his grandmother’s story about how shadow theatre was created in ancient China, Kubbe decides to produce his own shadow theatre: an unusal retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. The tablet’s affordances of back lighting, animation and visual spatiality are exploited in this app in a manner that suits and enhances the different stories’ individual characteristics.
Åshild Kanstad Johnsen Gyldendal, 2013
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Den interaktive billedboken til Kari Stai handler om Jakob, som alltid sier ja, og Neikob, som alltid sier nei. Dette er en ganske enkel digitalisering av papirboken, men den er likevel svært effektiv. Barn elsker å trykke på Jakob og Neikob for å få dem til å si ja! og nei! om og om igjen, og denne repetisjonen fungerer utmerket siden det også er et viktig virkemiddel i teksten. iPad
NORWAY
Jakob og Neikob
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This is a remediation of a popular paper book about two friends whose names reflect their personalities. Jakob always says yes (ja) to everything, and Neikob always says no (nei). The interactivity that has been added to the app version works perfectly. Of course children love touching Jakob to make him say ja, and Neikob to make him say nei. The repetition of this interaction perfectly mirrors the repetition in the characters’ responses, which is the whole point of the narrative. Other features, like being able to turn lights on and off, also enhance the experience, which culminates in Jakob’s cunningly finding a way to make Neikob go along with his plans, allowing them to escape great danger involving a thief and a crocodile. An English version is available as Yesper and Noper. Kari Stai Samlaget, 2011
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Kari Stai: Jakob og Neikob, Samlaget, 2011
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ELECTRONIC LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN IN SWEDEN Maria Engberg & Lissa Holloway-Attaway As is the case in most northern European countries, various kinds of electronic, or digital, literature for children and young adults have been available since the late 1990s with some earlier examples. Libraries started to offer access to electronic literature in the early 2000s. Before this, CD-ROMs and disks offered a way to distribute electronic material of mostly non-fictional character, such as encyclopedias and games. As access to digital devices of various kinds increased, more and more electronic formats for children’s literature appeared. Today, all major publishers in Sweden offer electronic versions of many if not most of their titles. At present, electronic literature for children can be grouped in two main groups: general electronic formats (such as e-publishing formats, eg. EPUB, for the screen or specific devices such as reading tablets), applications for smart phones and tablet computers. Publishers such as the various publishers within the Bonnier group (Bonnier Carlsen specializes in books for children and teenagers), Faber&Faber, Rabén & Sjögren, Opal, and Natur & Kultur publish EPUB format e-books for sale through online vendors: the most common are Bokus (www.bokus.com, now owned by Akademibokhandeln) and dito (dito.se) that specializes in e-books and audio-books.
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Apps for mobile devices are sold through the channels for the various devices: AppStore, Google Play and so on. Apps are often more multimodal, and can include audio and video which EPUB formats do not allow for. According to The Swedish Publishers’ Association (the trade organisation for the Swedish book-publishing industry) e-book sales have had a slower rate of expansion than in the United States, U.K, France and Germany, but are now expanding rapidly in Sweden. The percentage of e-book reading of all reading is still fairly low, about 1%, and e-books represent about 2% of the overall sales for publishers. The annual sales of children’s literature in Sweden represent 346 M SEK out of which 0.8% are e-books and 1.2% are audio books. The more recent app-development for children is fuelled by the increasing use of mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets. Statistics regarding app sales are harder to find and such figures do not always appear in statistics with e-book sales. Nevertheless there are experiments with digital publishing for children where book characters or stories are blended with elements of interactivity, games or puzzles.
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Popular books and characters that have included e-books or apps to books and other merchandise include Stina Wirsén’s VEM? app (for iOS) that lets the parent choose to read themselves or let the narrator read to the child; the Mamma Mu-series that has apps for point-and-click or swipe interaction, narrator’s voice, and other audio and image elements, or the puzzle and learning apps of the Pettson & Findus-series by Sven Nordqvist (books published by Opal Publising, apps by Filimundus). For more information on electronic literature for children in Sweden, both original and translated works, see Barnens bibliotek: http://www.barnensbibliotek.se/ Pappas appar: http://www.pappasappar.se/ Appfredag: https://www.facebook.com/appfredag Selv om svensk elektronisk litteratur for barn og unge har vært tilgjengelig på CD-ROM siden 90-tallet er det relativt lite aktivitet på feltet i dag. Bruk av ebøker har økt saktere i Sverige enn i mange andre land, og 99% av all litteratur leses på papir. Som i Norge er det en rekke visuelle lydbøker, altså digitaliserte utgaver av populære billedbøker med opplesning. Blant de mest populære er Stina Wirséns Vem? og Mamma Mu-serien av Jujja og Tomas Wieslander. Sverige har også et sterkt miljø innen mobilspillutvikling, og Sven Nordqvists Pettson och Findus bøker har gjort suksess med appen Pettsons Uppfinningar, men da med liten vekt på det litterære.
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Denne digitale adapsjonen av Pernilla Stalfelts bildebok ved samme navn forteller om FNs barnekonvensjon på en måte som barn kan forstå. Enkle, generelle beskrivelser illustreres med tegninger av barn i konkrete situasjoner, gjerne med snakkebobler, og når leseren tar på en av tegningene høres en lydeffekt eller snakkeboblene leses opp.
iPad android
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Alla barns rätt
Children’s literature can include non-fiction texts, and this app, developed by Spinfy, is an example. It is a creatively retold version of the The United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child in a way that is aimed at young children. Each spread is read aloud, and when the reader touches one of the illustrations, a sound is heard, or the speech bubbles that many illustrations have are read out. For instance, the page explaining that all children have the right to privacy shows a girl with a diary, and when you touch the diary, a voice whispers: “Ssh, don’t tell”. The app is an adaptation of a picture book Pernilla Stalfelt’s wrote and illustrated in 2010.
Pernilla Stalfel Spinfy/Rabén & Sjögren 2012
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Duoen Simogo er kjent for å lage mobilspill som ikke akkurat er tradisjonelle spill, og The Sailor’s Dream et et verk som heller langt mer mot litteratur enn spill. Leseren navigerer gjennom et vakkert illustrert drømmelandskap og finner små tekstfragmenter som forteller bruddstykker fra en historie om en jente som kanskje har brent ned et hus og om en kvinne og en sjømann som lengter etter hverandre. I tillegg til å utforske tekstene som ligger skjult i sjølandskapet er det egne sanger og tekster som kun kan høres på bestemte ukedager eller tidspunkt. The Sailor’s Dream er en interaktiv fortelling som passer for ungdom såvel som voksne. SWEDEN
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The Sailor’s Dream
This is a story about a girl, a woman and an old sailor told in images, sounds and fragments of text that the reader must find by navigating through a dreamlike ocean landscape. By taking advantage of the affordances of a tablet, Simon Flesser and Magnus Gardebäck have created a fictional world built on an exceptional lyrical narrative, engaging graphics and a soundtrack that completes a well balanced enviroment that readers will love to navigate. The work uses the iPad in portrait mode, and begins with a dark screen with the words: “It’s night.” The reader swipes the words to the left to read more, sentence by sentence on the dark screen: “A girl lies in her bed. There’s not a sound. No footsteps in the hallway, no one talking or whispering. Everything is quiet. The girl shuts her eyes.” The sound of waves fades in, and you see you are in the ocean with islands to explore. A visual hypertext without links, you navigate through this world finding spaces that lead to short texts that seen together tell a story of loss, memories and fire. Simon Flesser & Magnus Gardebäck Simogo, 2014
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In addition to in kind support from Bergen Public Library and the University of Bergen, this exhibition and catalogue has received funding from the Nordic Culture Fund. Network participants and contributors to the exhibition and catalogue include: Serena Borsello Aarhus Public Libraries Martin Campostrini Roskilde Library Maria Engberg Malmö University Mari Jore Bergen Public Library Nina Goga Bergen University College Paula Halkola The Finnish Institute for Children's Literature Ayoe Quist Henkel Centre for Children’s Literature, Aarhus University Lissa Holloway-Attaway University of Skövde Raine Koskimaa University of Jyväskylä Herdis Moldøen Bergen Public Library Katri Nikanen Jyväskylä City Library Lucas Ramada Prieto Autonomous University of Barcelona Margrete Rasmussen Bergen Public Library Jill Walker Rettberg University of Bergen Scott Rettberg University of Bergen Karen Areklett Vikingstad Bergen Public Library PT Serif PT Sans PT Mono
Arctic Volume Highwhite 250 g Munken polar 150 g Print: Bodoni Circulation: 500
What new kinds of children's literature can we create when we use the possibilities of computation? This catalogue documents an exhibition of electronic literature for children and young adults, including works from the ELO 2015 conference as well as a selection of Nordic works. These stories and poems move, they respond to a reader's touch, they use sounds and images as well as text and show us what children's literature can be.