Nosy Crow tag

Technology v Literature in Brazil: Kate Wilson v Alberto Manguel

Posted by Kate on Aug 29, 2011

I thought that I would share this cartoon which appeared yesterday in a local Brazilian newspaper following a verbal fracas in front of 3,500 people at the 14th Jornada Nacional de Literatura literary festival in Passo Fundo in the South of Brazil, to which I was invited. The row – and it really was quite heated – was between me (I’m in the blue jacket in the cartoon) and Alberto Manguel, a highly-respected Argentinian writer for adults (the bearded guy in the cartoon).

Alberto Manguel on the panel

It took place on the last day of what is a truly remarkable literary festival for adults and children. The festival draws audiences – in a huge circus tent – of up to 5,000 people, with a range of smaller seminars and children’s events in other spaces too. The event happens every other year. It was created 30 years ago and driven forward even since by the remarkable Tania Rosing. You really don’t need to speak Portuguese to understand the energy and dynamism exhibited by her here ! Passo Fundo literacy rates are significantly higher than those elsewhere in Brazil, and that’s part of Tania Rosing’s achievement.

Tania Rosing

The argument is reported – not entirely accurately from my point of view! – here, and we’ll try to get a translation out shortly.

The topic of debate was The Contemporary Reader.

It was a demonstration of our forthcoming app, Cinderella, that enraged the Argentinian writer. As soon as I’d finished my presentation, which ended with the demonstration, Alberto Manguel seized the microphone to say he thought that he’d come to debate what was forming the contemporary reader, not what was deforming the reader. He said that the app was a terrible thing and that children exposed to apps like it were not reading and would never learn to read. I asked to reply, and was handed the microphone, but as soon as I’d said two sentences, he interrupted in English saying, “That’s nonsense!” I am afraid, blog readers, that it was here that I got cross. To have a negative view, however expressed, about apps and digital reading altogether is absolutely fine by me, even if it is based on a very, very limited understanding of technology and today’s children. But to interrupt a response to it is just not acceptable. And I told him so: I’d listened to him, so now he had to listen to me.

Me on the panel

Of course, the crowd in the tent – a terrifying 3,500 strong, remember – just loved the whole thing, and every time either of us spoke, there were huge cheers from supporters of our point of view. My point of view was that technology supports reading and conversations about reading. Alfredo Manguel’s was that technology was an assault on literature, and, importantly, that the book was something that was above commerce and that technology somehow made it commercial.

Much of what we talked about is already controversial, as this Guardian article makes clear.

My own views on interactive reading experiences are outlined here. Children are spending more and more time in front of screens – as a look at the survey reported here would suggest and much of the Strathclyde and Stirling University research mentioned here covers. If we don’t provide compelling, exciting reading experiences on screens, then, because children are spending more and more time on screens, they will, it seems to me, simply read less. And if those of us with real expertise and understanding of children’s reading don’t create those reading experiences then others will fill that gap with either inferior reading experiences or with games with no reading component.

National Literacy Trust research between 2005 and 2009 suggests that children in the UK are reading slightly less frequently:

English children 7-11 report the frequency with which they read in 2005 and then again (second darker column) in 2009

The research also suggests that children are enjoying reading slightly less:

English children 7-11 report how much they enjoy reading in 2005 and then again (second darker column) in 2009

When they do read, much of what they read is on screen:

English children 7-11 report what they like reading in 2009. Red indicates material they are accessing on screen, blue is print: dark blue is books, and light blue is other printed material.

Our many blogs about great children’s books (most recently, our blog about books for summer), make it clear, I hope, that we value and applaud great writing for children in whatever form and want children to have access to it whether through libraries, bookshops, or supermarkets.

But the idea that technology and literature are somehow “opposites” or at least in opposition seems to me to be sloppy thinking.Technology’s just a tool and we can use it to open up conversations about reading, to facilitate access to reading, and to create new kinds of reading experiences. Packing to come for Brazil (and with the salutary memory of the number of books my family took on holiday still fresh), I just brought a paperback and my Kindle. The paperback I brought was The Observations and I tweeted about it, stimulating a Twitter exchange which involved the author, Jane Harris: technology enabled a conversation about reading, including providing me, the reader, with access to the author. Having finished the book, I decided I wanted to reread Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood… and, in a hotel room in Passo Fundo, I downloaded it in seconds: technology facilitated access to literature. And anyone doubting that an app like The Three Little Pigs is a reading experience might be convinced by this video showing a pre-schooler reading our Three Little Pigs app as a known text sent in to us by a parent.

George Dugdale, policy adviser at the National Literacy Trust, was recently quoted in the Glasgow Herald as saying,“In today’s digital age, we believe that all reading experiences must be embraced, whether children are reading text messages on their mobile phones, on-screen or a physical book. Our research has shown that children who regularly use technology, such as Facebook, actually have more positive attitudes towards reading and writing than those who don’t.”

In fact, Brazilian writer, Affonso Romano de Sant’Anna, who was on the Passo Fundo panel said smartphones and reading devices might, in a short time, achieve what Brazil has, over the years, failed to do: make a wide selection of reading widely available. He said that, while the government still hadn’t established enough libraries in all the decades of trying, perhaps electronic devices could be the libraries of the future.

The debate touched on another (largely artificial) polarisation too: between literacy and literature. I think that our apps are great, empowering, beautiful and carefully thought-through reading experiences – literature, if you like – but if I have to choose between literature and literacy (and, in this polarised debate in Passo Fundo, that’s exactly what I was forced to do), I choose literacy. In the end, what matters to me is less what children read, but that children read, whether it’s in print or on screen. Many children won’t grow up to read Alberto Manguel or his English-language equivalent, and that’s maybe regrettable, but not as regrettable as many children growing up unable or reluctant to read at all, given how essential literacy is to improved life chances. And you become a reader, quite simply, by practising reading.

Brazilian children reading our Cinderella app

“Jornada” means “journey”, and I’d be the first to say – in fact, I said at the end of my presentation – that we are all are just at the beginning of a journey when we are creating digital reading experiences. But we think what we are doing is worthwhile. We know, from blogs, emails and iTunes reviews, that many teachers and parents welcome the apps we’re creating, and that they are also being used by teachers and parents of children with special needs, such as children on the autistic spectrum, or find it difficult to learn to read.

But what do you think?

Tagged with affonso romano de sant'anna, alberto manguel, apps, apps for children, digital reading, jornada nacional de literatura, kate wilson, literacy, literacy research, literature, national literacy trust, passo fundo

National Literacy Trust Young Readers Programme, Cressida Cowell and an auction

Posted by Kate on Jun 19, 2011

In the UK, one in six people struggles with literacy. The National Literacy Trust is an independent charity working to ensure that everyone has the literacy skills they need to lead a successful and happy life.

Last week, I was invited, as a member of the Trust’s Advisory Committee, to an inspiring event that was part of the Trust’s Young Readers Programme. The Young Readers Programme (formerly known as Reading Is Fundamental, which is the name the sister US programme continues to use) aims to bring reading for pleasure to 200 communities of children – children in schools, children in refuges, children in care – that need reading support. In the course of the programme, children are introduced to the skills they need to choose books (the children learn to “decode” a cover, to read a blurb, and to check inside to see if a book is at an appropriate reading level). The emphasis is entirely on reading for pleasure, and the programme is based on OECD research that suggests that reading for pleasure by the age of 15 is a powerful indicator of future life chances, even when parental socio-economic and education levels are taken into account. These skills are taught by specially-trained people within or familiar with the community, who are often, but not always, librarians. The children receive three free books in the course of the programme which lasts at least 12 weeks. Wherever possible, children meet authors or storytellers who bring their own passion to the storytelling and book-choosing process.

The event I went to was at the Barbican Library. Cressida Cowell (pictured above at the event) was reading and talking to children from a nearby school.

She began the event by talking about a book she loved as a child: Peter Pan by J M Barrie. She read aloud the shockingly violent and very compelling first description of Captain Hook in which he eviscerates another pirate with his hook without taking the cigar from his mouth. She spoke about being a London-born child who longed for something extraordinary to happen – longed for the kind of adventure that the Darling children have in Peter Pan. In fact, for her, the real life childhood adventure was going on holiday year after year to the same small Scottish island: her own equivalent of Barrie’s Neverland. She said she used to sit at the top of the island, and imagine a Viking invasion. She described, too, the face she could see in the cliffs on the island’s beach, with two caves for eye-sockets. She said she used to imagine what might live in those caves: dragons, perhaps…

Peter Pan, islands, Vikings, dragons and caves, of course, all combine in her brilliant Hiccup books. She read – dropping her voice to a whisper at times, while the children held their breath – from the first novel in the series, How To Train Your Dragon about Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III’s journey with his friends into a cave used by dragons as a nursery (not, she said, unlike the left eye socket cave in the face in the cliffs on the island on which she’d spent her holidays) to catch his own dragon.

It was a stellar performance and one that really engaged the children. Here she is afterwards, surrounded by fans:

The National Literacy Trust campaigns for the recognition of the impact of literacy issues; runs projects and initiatives such as the Young Readers Programme; and is a the most fantastic source of information and research on literacy in the UK.

There are lots of ways to support it.

One is to participate in the auction it’s recently set up (closing date for bids February 24 June), auctioning favourite books belonging to favourite authors. You could, for example, get a copy of Shrek by William Steig from Axel Scheffler’s bookcase:

The book has a message and a sketch from Axel inside it:

Tagged with axel scheffler, books for boys, cressida cowell, hiccup the viking, how to train your dragon, literacy, literacy reserach, national literacy trust, peter pan, young reader's programme

London Book Fair - a (slightly) late update

Posted by Kate on Apr 17, 2011

Last week was the week of the London Book Fair.

This is a picture by Axel Scheffler, which he donated and which was sold to an anonymous buyer in aid of the National Literacy Trust. It shows the Gruffalo (and Mouse) with Pip and Posy going to the London Book Fair.

The London Book Fair, which has less of a rights focus and more of an export focus and is a general (as opposed to a children’s books) book fair, is very much secondary in importance to the Bologna Book Fair for Nosy Crow. It was particularly tough to focus on it this year as it came so hard on the heels of the Bologna Book Fair. It’s a fair at which, this year and last, we haven’t taken a stand, though I think we may have to rethink that for next year, given the number of messages left for us with the kind people of the Independent Publishers Guild stand.

On Monday, Deb presented our The Three Little Pigs app to a crowd of people in the children’s innovation space.

On Tuesday and on Wednesday (when Axel was, with Julia Donaldson, combined “author of the day”), Kate had a series of rights appointments. Some were with publishers who, for one reason or another, we were unable to see at Bologna, and some were follow-ups to Bologna apointments. We also had the chance to meet up with a few UK bookshop and other buyers.

Nosy Crow had been invited to participate in a Publishers Association presentation of key titles for the second half of the year to independent booksellers. We were the last of 12 publishers, and, the session was, perhaps inevitably, a bit of a “death-by-powerpoint” kind of thing, so we entirely abandoned our powerpoint, and spoke about just four things we’re publishing in the second half of this year, which I felt (on the hoof) gave some sense of the age-range and kind of books we cover: Pip and Posy: The Scary Monster ; Mega Mash-ups: Pirates and Ancient Egyptians in a Haunted Museum ; Olivia Flies High ; and our Christmas picture book, Just Right. Realistically, after seeing 70-odd titles, I thought that there wasn’t a chance of anyone remembering much about individual books, but I hoped that, by taking the less conventional approach, the independent booksellers would remember Nosy Crow, so that, when their Bounce rep came calling, they’d feel positively disposed towards the books.

I also did a talk as part of the Oxford Brookes University “Publishing Round The World” series, with an editor from Samokat and a founder of Milly Molly. Here’s me expounding Nosy Crow’s digital marketing thinking:

The photo above, which is as unflattering as it is grainy, was taken by Tom Bonnick, who’s interning with us. We wanted to check that his standards of photography are on the same level as our own if he is to continue to intern for us, and I am happy to say that they are! He did just take it with a phone, though, and from a long way away.

But all in all, a worthwhile few days.

Tagged with axel scheffler, bounce, children's apps, children's books, children's publishers, conferences, digital, just right, london book fair, lyn gardner, mega-mash-up, national literacy trust, nikalas catlow and tim wesson, olivia, pip and posy

Pre-launch lunch for Nosy Crow

Posted by Kate on Nov 17, 2010

On Monday, we had a pre-launch lunch for Nosy Crow. Adrian cooked up a storm (Indian food – a speciality of his), and we invited journalists and other influencial people in the world of children’s books to talk to them about our 2011 programme of books and apps. For some of them, the lunch was the first time they’d seen a children’s app.

Here’s Damian Kelleher talking to Nicholas Tucker of The Independent and Nicki Marsh of Book Trust talking to Abigail Moss of The National Literacy Trust.

It was a sort of celebration for the Nosy Crows too, as we have finished copies of our first two books and proofs of many others, so we are in the final run-up to publication.

Graeme Neill from The Bookseller came, and wrote a short article in yesterday’s electronic edition of The Bookseller.

Tagged with book trust, national literacy trust, publishing, the bookseller