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title: Wink!
author: Irmak

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# Wink!

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### A Prototype for Interactive Children's Literature

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.

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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. At least this is what I observed in Turkey. Teachers and parents were finding it difficult to find new books constantly or were tired of rereading the same book.

!["The twine map of text based story, reachable from Bee Within."](../irmak/twine.png){.half-image}

!["Click game story of the Queen Bee."](../irmak/cg.png){.half image}

!["Example page from the print version of the picture book."](../irmak/printp33.jpg){.image-95}

!["Example page from the print version of the picture book."](../irmak/printp3.jpg){.image-95}

![''](../irmak/printp44.jpg){.image-95}

![''](../irmak/printp4.jpg){.image-95}

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 named it, "Bee Within". 

Bee Within, is a story about grief 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. 

!["example page from the picture book"](../irmak/printp1.jpg){.half-image}

!["example page from the picture book"](../irmak/printp22.jpg){.image-95}

!["example page from the picture book"](../irmak/printp2.jpg){.image-95}

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. 

!["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"](../irmak/improv.JPG){.half-image}

!["From the event at Leeszaal West, experimenting with knots and poetry. How can we see movement in text?"](../irmak/leeszaalknotpoems.jpg){.image-95}

!["From the event at Leeszaal West. Some of the results of knotting text"](../irmak/knotpoems2.jpg){.image-95}

!["A small sequence of onclick animation for Bee Within"](../irmak/animationseq.png){.image-95}

!["A screenshot from Wink!"](../irmak/45.png){.image-95}