Wink!
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.
![From the event at Leeszaal West, experimenting with knots and poetry. How can we see movement in text?](../irmak/leeszaal knot poems.jpg)
![From the event at Leeszaal West. Some of the results of knotting text.](../irmak/knotpoems2.jpg)
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. 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”.
![Example page from the print version of the picture book.](../irmak/printp3.jpg)
![Example page from the print version of the picture book.](../irmak/printp4.jpg)
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 print version of the picture book.](../irmak/printp1.jpg)
![Example page from the print version of the picture book.](../irmak/printp2.jpg)
Over the past two years, I've been 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. It serves as a beginning for a longer research.
![The twine map of text based story, reachable from Bee Within by clicking to hear more about Gray the tree.](../irmak/twine.png)
![Click game story of the Queen Bee that is reachable within Maya's main storyline.](../irmak/clickgame.png)
Here is some more documentation from the beggining of this journey towards making accesible interactive narratives…
![A small sequence of onclick animation for Bee Within.](../irmak/animationseq.png)