<h3id="a-prototype-for-interactive-childrens-literature">A Prototype for Interactive Children’s Literature</h3>
<p>Wink is a prototype for an interactive picture book platform. This platform aims to make reading into a mindfull and thought provoking process by using interactive and playful elements, multiple stories within one narrative and sound elements. Especially today where consumerism and low attention span is a rising issue especially amongst young readers, this was an important task to tackle. The thought of Wink emerged to find a more sustainable and creative way of reading for elementary school children.</p>
<imgsrc="../irmak/twine.png"alt="The twine map of text based story, reachable from Bee Within."class="half-image"/><figcaption>The twine map of text based story, reachable from Bee Within.</figcaption>
<p>Working as a children’s literature editor for years, I came to a realisation that picture books were turning into another object that kids read and consume on daily basis.</p>
<imgsrc="../irmak/printp33.jpg"alt="Example page from the print version of the picture book."class="image-95"/><figcaption>Example page from the print version of the picture book.</figcaption>
<imgsrc="../irmak/printp3.jpg"alt="Example page from the print version of the picture book."class="image-95"/><figcaption>Example page from the print version of the picture book.</figcaption>
<p>As a young person in the publishing sector, I believe there should be more options for children as there is for adults; such as ebooks, audiobooks etc. But moreover a “book” that can be redefined, reread or be interacted with… So I revisited an old story I wrote, translated to English and called it, “Bee Within”.</p>
<p>Bee Within, is a story about grief/memory and it is based on my experiences throughout the years. I erased it, rewrote it, edited it, destroyed it multiple times over the past years; simultaneously with new experiences of loss. In the end, I believe the story turned out to be an ode to remembering or might I say an ode to not being able to forget or an ode to the fear of forgetting which I now think is a great and sweet battle between death and life. I think it is an important subject to touch upon, especially for children dealing with trauma in many parts of the world.</p>
<imgsrc="../irmak/printp1.jpg"alt="Example page from the picture book."class="half-image"/><figcaption>Example page from the picture book.</figcaption>
<p>Over the past two years, experimenting with storytelling techniques, interactivity options and workshops with children and adults, around reading and doing various exercises on Bee Within, I improved the story to be a more playful and interactive one which can be re-read, re-played and eventually re-formed non digitally to be reachable for all children.</p>
<imgsrc="../irmak/improv.JPG"alt="A tag made by a participant in the public moment at XPUB studio. Trying to understand different approaches to certain emotions/states for a bee."class="half-image"/><figcaption>A tag made by a participant in the public moment at XPUB studio. Trying to understand different approaches to certain emotions/states for a bee.</figcaption>
<imgsrc="../irmak/leeszaalknotpoems.jpg"alt="From the event at Leeszaal West, experimenting with knots and poetry. How can we see movement in text?"class="image-95"/><figcaption>From the event at Leeszaal West, experimenting with knots and poetry. How can we see movement in text?</figcaption>
<imgsrc="../irmak/knotpoems2.jpg"alt="From the event at Leeszaal West. Some of the results of knotting text."class="image-95"/><figcaption>From the event at Leeszaal West. Some of the results of knotting text.</figcaption>
<imgsrc="../irmak/animationseq.png"alt="A small sequence of onclick animation for Bee Within."class="image-95"/><figcaption>A small sequence of onclick animation for Bee Within.</figcaption>