My desire to write a children’s book about grief and memory ignited when I was studying in college and doing an internship in a publishing house in Ankara. I was struggling to process a loss I experienced at the time and to find something to cling to on a daily basis. Then one day I started hearing a buzzing sound in my bedroom at my family’s house. I searched everywhere but couldn’t find the source for this noise. I asked my father and he started searching too. A couple of days passed and the buzzing was still there.
One day I found a bee on the floor in my bedroom and realized that the bees nested on the roof and were coming inside my room through a gap in the lamp. I was terrified because I have an allergy to bees and thought they might sting me in my sleep. This moment was when I realized I was so determined to find this buzzing sound for some time that I forgot about dealing with the loss I was experiencing. This made me feel very guilty and I remember thinking I betrayed the person I lost.
-As funny as it may appear, I felt like I was sabotaged by these bees that I thought were here to hurt me but in the end they made me understand that its ok to let things go and every being does what it has to do to find its way of survival. The little habitat that they chose to create in my room seemed like a calling or a sign that I can aff ect another living being significantly without being aware of it. This goes for everything, no matter if some people leave us in this world, they have living matter in us that keeps pulsing. So then I started researching bees and their ecosystems. I read Alan Watts, Alan Lightman, Emily Dickinson, Maurice Sendak, Meghan O’Rourke, Oliver Sacks, Joanna Macy, Rilke, Montaigne and theories on order in chaos, correlative vision, harmony of contained conflicts and the mortality paradox. I wrote a lot and erased a lot and fairly figured out the wisdom of not knowing things.
+As funny as it may appear, I felt like I was sabotaged by these bees that I thought were here to hurt me but in the end they made me understand that its ok to let things go and every being does what it has to do to find its way of survival. The little habitat that they chose to create in my room seemed like a calling or a sign that I can aff ect another living being significantly without being aware of it. This goes for everything, no matter if some people leave us in this world, they have living matter in us that keeps pulsing. So then I started researching bees and their ecosystems. I read Alan Watts, Alan Lightman, Emily Dickinson, Maurice Sendak, Meghan O’Rourke, Oliver Sacks, Joanna Macy, Rilke, Montaigne and theories on order in chaos, correlative vision, harmony of contained conflicts and the mortality paradox. I wrote a lot and erased a lot and fairly figured out the wisdom of not knowing things.I wrote and deleted and rewrote the story 3 times already.
Years passed and I wrote and deleted and rewrote the story that I am working on to make interactive today so many times and was waiting on it because it always felt incomplete. In a way it will always be incomplete because of the natural ambiguity the topic carries. Years later, grief was back in my life with the loss of my grandfather. So therefore, the story I wrote and abandoned changed again as I attempted to rewrite it as a diff erent version of myself with a diff erent understanding of death. And this went on… The story remained hidden and I forgot why it ever existed in the first place.
Last year when two earthquakes hit Syria and Turkey, I was drowned like everyone I know, by a collective trauma and grief. Then this horrible feeling flared up by neglect and desperation. It was and still is impossible to mourn so many strangers at the same time. I lost two dear friends, I was furious, away from home, mostly alone and remembered vividly my failed attempt to understand or place grief in one of the piles in my mind.
Previous months, I was working on this story (yes, again) but didn’t know how to tackle the text because it was so diff erent to what I was experiencing now, when compared to the last time I rewrote it. A tutor asked me why I wrote this story in the first place and I couldn’t remember. I kept tracing back to 2016 and step by step, remembered why, as told above. The consciousness that this story is actually a personal history of how I went through grief in diff erent stages of my life, made me realise that it doesn’t have to be or even can be a perfect story.
In the end with the experience I had with loss, 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
-The effect of storytelling knowledge on kids’ development and creativity. What can we learn from open ended and multiple ending stories?
-ability to form basic stories or to express their emotions through fictional characters or events. Children are not born with a wide vocabulary of emotions and expressions. They learn how to read, mimic and express their feelings over time. The more children read, write and are exposed to social environments, the more they widen their sense and ability of expressing themselves. The language gained as kids comes in many forms and storytelling plays a crucial role in this development. The exposure to stories prepares the kids to the era of reading and writing. Children come to understand and value feelings through conversation (Dettore, 2002). When children are off ered to read or share stories, they also learn to understand people around them better and gain emotional literacy.
-Storytelling has been a means of communicating with others for many centuries. It is not only a way to discuss important events, but also a way to entertain one another (Lawrence & Paige, 2013). Stories have been told orally, in writing or with drawings for thousands of years and some of these stories are still alive. This is because language is a living thing that travels through time and still remains brand new. When necessary, it just adapts form, evolves and blends in with the changing world. Children comprehend the idea that they have a story to tell by hearing other stories and this ignites the imagination. We tend to forget many things but almost everyone remembers one small story they heard or read when they were a kid, this moment we remember is the moment a certain story sparked for us.
-Nowadays storytelling takes many forms. For example, some readers’ story might even begin from here although it isn’t the beginning. Interactivity is one of the storytelling forms that can signifi- cantly improve children’s creativity. This is mainly because children as readers or listeners get to contribute and aff ect the story. This of course requires and improves creative and active thinking. Getting the chance to choose a path for a fictional character gives the child the freedom and confi dence of constructing a world, a character or an adventure. Although this is essentially “writing” as we know it, children think of this as a game, yet to discover they are actually becoming writers. What kind of reward can we expect from active participation in a story? Narrative pleasure can be generally described in terms of immersions (spatial, temporal, emotional, epistemic) in a fictional world (Ryan, 2009). When we are set to create or co-create a world, the narrative has eff ects on us such as curiosity, suspense and surprise. At this point, we start creatively producing ideas to keep these three emotions.
-Interactive storytelling reminds everyone but especially children that there are limitless endings to a story that is solely up to the maker’s creation. Learning to think this way instead of knowing or assuming an end to a story, I think influences the children’s decision making abilities and sense of responsibility towards their creations. It is basically the same in theatre where if an actor chooses to create an imaginary suitcase on stage, they can’t simply leave this object they created on stage and exit the scene because the audience will wonder why the actor didn’t take the imaginary suitcase as they left. In this case, when kids decide to choose a path or item or any attribute for a character in a story, they feel responsible and curious to see it through to the end or decide what to do with it. This interactivity therefore creates a unique bond between the reader/writer and the text.
-There are many theories on how to approach interactive literature for children. Multi-literacy theory and digital literacies are some of the theories which I find relevant to my aim with Wink. Multiliteracy theory in a nutshell is an education oriented framework that aims to expand traditional reading and writing skills. This theory was developed by the New London Group. They were a collective of scholars and educators who addressed the changing nature of literacy in an increasingly globalized, digital world. The theory explores multiple modes of communication consisting The sense of storytelling settles for kids, starting from age three. By this time, children have the of multimodal communication, cultural and social contexts, critical inquiry, socio-cultural learning theory and pedagogical implications. Multimodal communication focuses on the variety of communication techniques. This was groundbreaking in the 90s because of its acknowledgment of a diverse range of literacies and its departure from traditional approaches to literary texts. This theory includes new media and communication studies such as visual, digital, special and gestural literacies.
-I kept this theory in mind as I chose the interactivity elements to use in the picture book. I think the usage of multiple media such as sound, image and games is a good way to start and diff erentiate from a regular interactive e-book. The fact that this theory has an educational perspective and is taking the rapidly changing qualities of literature seriously, made me consider it as a guide in designing the prototype.
-Looking through the perspective of multiliteracies, questions come up for me that lead to the rest of this thesis: What is an interactive picture book? Is it a book? Is it a game? Is it an exercise?
-What is it defined as? How can we design an interactive reading environment without confusing children?
-======= -My desire to write a children’s book about grief and memory ignited -when I was studying in college and doing an internship in a publishing -house in Ankara. I was struggling to process a loss I experienced at the -time and to find something to cling to on a daily basis. Then one day I -started hearing a buzzing sound in my bedroom at my family’s house. I -searched everywhere but couldn’t find the source for this noise. I asked -my father and he started searching too. A couple of days passed and the -buzzing was still there.
-One day I found a bee on the floor in my bedroom and realized that -the bees nested on the roof and were coming inside my room through a gap -in the lamp. I was terrified because I have an allergy to bees and -thought they might sting me in my sleep. This moment was when I realized -I was so determined to find this buzzing sound for some time that I -forgot about dealing with the loss I was experiencing. This made me feel -very guilty and I remember thinking I betrayed the person I lost.
-As funny as it may appear, I felt like I was sabotaged by these bees
-that I thought were here to hurt me but in the end they made me
-understand that its ok to let things go and every being does what it has
-to do to find its way of survival. The little habitat that they chose to
-create in my room seemed like a calling or a sign that I can aff ect
-another living being significantly without being aware of it. This goes
-for everything, no matter if some people leave us in this world, they
-have living matter in us that keeps pulsing. So then I started
-researching bees and their ecosystems. I read Alan Watts, Alan Lightman,
-Emily Dickinson, Maurice Sendak, Meghan O’Rourke, Oliver Sacks, Joanna
-Macy, Rilke, Montaigne and theories on order in chaos, correlative
-vision, harmony of contained conflicts and the mortality paradox. I
-wrote a lot and erased a lot and fairly figured out the wisdom of not
-knowing things.I wrote and deleted
-and rewrote the story 3 times already.
Years passed and I wrote and deleted and rewrote the story that I am -working on to make interactive today so many times and was waiting on it -because it always felt incomplete. In a way it will always be incomplete -because of the natural ambiguity the topic carries. Years later, grief -was back in my life with the loss of my grandfather. So therefore, the -story I wrote and abandoned changed again as I attempted to rewrite it -as a diff erent version of myself with a diff erent understanding of -death. And this went on… The story remained hidden and I forgot why it -ever existed in the first place.
-Last year when two earthquakes hit Syria and Turkey, I was drowned -like everyone I know, by a collective trauma and grief. Then this -horrible feeling flared up by neglect and desperation. It was and still -is impossible to mourn so many strangers at the same time. I lost two -dear friends, I was furious, away from home, mostly alone and remembered -vividly my failed attempt to understand or place grief in one of the -piles in my mind.
-Previous months, I was working on this story (yes, again) but didn’t -know how to tackle the text because it was so diff erent to what I was -experiencing now, when compared to the last time I rewrote it. A tutor -asked me why I wrote this story in the first place and I couldn’t -remember. I kept tracing back to 2016 and step by step, remembered why, -as told above. The consciousness that this story is actually a personal -history of how I went through grief in diff erent stages of my life, -made me realise that it doesn’t have to be or even can be a perfect -story.
-In the end with the experience I had with loss, 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
### Loop 2The effect of storytelling knowledge on kids’ -development and creativity. What can we learn from open ended and -multiple ending stories?
-ability to form basic stories or to express their emotions through -fictional characters or events. Children are not born with a wide -vocabulary of emotions and expressions. They learn how to read, mimic -and express their feelings over time. The more children read, write and -are exposed to social environments, the more they widen their sense and -ability of expressing themselves. The language gained as kids comes in -many forms and storytelling plays a crucial role in this development. -The exposure to stories prepares the kids to the era of reading and -writing. Children come to understand and value feelings through -conversation (Dettore, 2002). When children are off ered to read or -share stories, they also learn to understand people around them better -and gain emotional literacy.
-Storytelling has been a means of communicating with others for many -centuries. It is not only a way to discuss important events, but also a -way to entertain one another (Lawrence & Paige, 2013). Stories have -been told orally, in writing or with drawings for thousands of years and -some of these stories are still alive. This is because language is a -living thing that travels through time and still remains brand new. When -necessary, it just adapts form, evolves and blends in with the changing -world. Children comprehend the idea that they have a story to tell by -hearing other stories and this ignites the imagination. We tend to -forget many things but almost everyone remembers one small story they -heard or read when they were a kid, this moment we remember is the -moment a certain story sparked for us.
-Nowadays storytelling takes many forms. For example, some readers’ -story might even begin from here although it isn’t the beginning. -Interactivity is one of the storytelling forms that can signifi- cantly -improve children’s creativity. This is mainly because children as -readers or listeners get to contribute and aff ect the story. This of -course requires and improves creative and active thinking. Getting the -chance to choose a path for a fictional character gives the child the -freedom and confi dence of constructing a world, a character or an -adventure. Although this is essentially “writing” as we know it, -children think of this as a game, yet to discover they are actually -becoming writers. What kind of reward can we expect from active -participation in a story? Narrative pleasure can be generally described -in terms of immersions (spatial, temporal, emotional, epistemic) in a -fictional world (Ryan, 2009). When we are set to create or co-create a -world, the narrative has eff ects on us such as curiosity, suspense and -surprise. At this point, we start creatively producing ideas to keep -these three emotions.
-Interactive storytelling reminds everyone but especially children -that there are limitless endings to a story that is solely up to the -maker’s creation. Learning to think this way instead of knowing or -assuming an end to a story, I think influences the children’s decision -making abilities and sense of responsibility towards their creations. It -is basically the same in theatre where if an actor chooses to create an -imaginary suitcase on stage, they can’t simply leave this object they -created on stage and exit the scene because the audience will wonder why -the actor didn’t take the imaginary suitcase as they left. In this case, -when kids decide to choose a path or item or any attribute for a -character in a story, they feel responsible and curious to see it -through to the end or decide what to do with it. This interactivity -therefore creates a unique bond between the reader/writer and the -text.
-There are many theories on how to approach interactive literature for -children. Multi-literacy theory and digital literacies are some of the -theories which I find relevant to my aim with Wink. Multiliteracy theory -in a nutshell is an education oriented framework that aims to expand -traditional reading and writing skills. This theory was developed by the -New London Group. They were a collective of scholars and educators who -addressed the changing nature of literacy in an increasingly globalized, -digital world. The theory explores multiple modes of communication -consisting The sense of storytelling settles for kids, starting from age -three. By this time, children have the of multimodal communication, -cultural and social contexts, critical inquiry, socio-cultural learning -theory and pedagogical implications. Multimodal communication focuses on -the variety of communication techniques. This was groundbreaking in the -90s because of its acknowledgment of a diverse range of literacies and -its departure from traditional approaches to literary texts. This theory -includes new media and communication studies such as visual, digital, -special and gestural literacies.
-I kept this theory in mind as I chose the interactivity elements to -use in the picture book. I think the usage of multiple media such as -sound, image and games is a good way to start and diff erentiate from a -regular interactive e-book. The fact that this theory has an educational -perspective and is taking the rapidly changing qualities of literature -seriously, made me consider it as a guide in designing the -prototype.
-Looking through the perspective of multiliteracies, questions come up -for me that lead to the rest of this thesis: What is an interactive -picture book? Is it a book? Is it a game? Is it an exercise?
-What is it defined as? How can we design an interactive reading -environment without confusing children?
->>>>>>> 80dedd3c2c89d3464fc6027a3939f61e279de8e0 +ability to form basic stories or to express their emotions through fictional characters or events. Children are not born with a wide vocabulary of emotions and expressions. They learn how to read, mimic and express their feelings over time. The more children read, write and are exposed to social environments, the more they widen their sense and ability of expressing themselves. The language gained as kids comes in many forms and storytelling plays a crucial role in this development. The exposure to stories prepares the kids to the era of reading and writing. Children come to understand and value feelings through conversation (Dettore, 2002). When children are off ered to read or share stories, they also learn to understand people around them better and gain emotional literacy.
+Storytelling has been a means of communicating with others for many centuries. It is not only a way to discuss important events, but also a way to entertain one another (Lawrence & Paige, 2013). Stories have been told orally, in writing or with drawings for thousands of years and some of these stories are still alive. This is because language is a living thing that travels through time and still remains brand new. When necessary, it just adapts form, evolves and blends in with the changing world. Children comprehend the idea that they have a story to tell by hearing other stories and this ignites the imagination. We tend to forget many things but almost everyone remembers one small story they heard or read when they were a kid, this moment we remember is the moment a certain story sparked for us.
+Nowadays storytelling takes many forms. For example, some readers’ story might even begin from here although it isn’t the beginning. Interactivity is one of the storytelling forms that can signifi- cantly improve children’s creativity. This is mainly because children as readers or listeners get to contribute and aff ect the story. This of course requires and improves creative and active thinking. Getting the chance to choose a path for a fictional character gives the child the freedom and confi dence of constructing a world, a character or an adventure. Although this is essentially “writing” as we know it, children think of this as a game, yet to discover they are actually becoming writers. What kind of reward can we expect from active participation in a story? Narrative pleasure can be generally described in terms of immersions (spatial, temporal, emotional, epistemic) in a fictional world (Ryan, 2009). When we are set to create or co-create a world, the narrative has eff ects on us such as curiosity, suspense and surprise. At this point, we start creatively producing ideas to keep these three emotions.
+Interactive storytelling reminds everyone but especially children that there are limitless endings to a story that is solely up to the maker’s creation. Learning to think this way instead of knowing or assuming an end to a story, I think influences the children’s decision making abilities and sense of responsibility towards their creations. It is basically the same in theatre where if an actor chooses to create an imaginary suitcase on stage, they can’t simply leave this object they created on stage and exit the scene because the audience will wonder why the actor didn’t take the imaginary suitcase as they left. In this case, when kids decide to choose a path or item or any attribute for a character in a story, they feel responsible and curious to see it through to the end or decide what to do with it. This interactivity therefore creates a unique bond between the reader/writer and the text.
+There are many theories on how to approach interactive literature for children. Multi-literacy theory and digital literacies are some of the theories which I find relevant to my aim with Wink. Multiliteracy theory in a nutshell is an education oriented framework that aims to expand traditional reading and writing skills. This theory was developed by the New London Group. They were a collective of scholars and educators who addressed the changing nature of literacy in an increasingly globalized, digital world. The theory explores multiple modes of communication consisting The sense of storytelling settles for kids, starting from age three. By this time, children have the of multimodal communication, cultural and social contexts, critical inquiry, socio-cultural learning theory and pedagogical implications. Multimodal communication focuses on the variety of communication techniques. This was groundbreaking in the 90s because of its acknowledgment of a diverse range of literacies and its departure from traditional approaches to literary texts. This theory includes new media and communication studies such as visual, digital, special and gestural literacies.
+I kept this theory in mind as I chose the interactivity elements to use in the picture book. I think the usage of multiple media such as sound, image and games is a good way to start and diff erentiate from a regular interactive e-book. The fact that this theory has an educational perspective and is taking the rapidly changing qualities of literature seriously, made me consider it as a guide in designing the prototype.
+Looking through the perspective of multiliteracies, questions come up for me that lead to the rest of this thesis: What is an interactive picture book? Is it a book? Is it a game? Is it an exercise?
+What is it defined as? How can we design an interactive reading environment without confusing children?
Diff erences and similarities between interactive e-books and storytelling games
Storytelling games and interactive e-books have many things in common. To begin with, they both centralize the narrative to engage the audience. While both of these formats are storytelling tools, e-books tend to stay more in a linear narrative and format when compared to storytelling games where the audience is commonly the main character. Reading experiences are also a way to be in the shoes of the narrator or the character but in a storytelling game, you embody the mission and the experience overrules the story most of the time. In the specific example of a child, storytelling games are complicated and puzzle driven where the player has missions to complete. Whereas in an interactive e-book, the missions are solely based on the interactive elements implemented in the text and images.