Goodnight iPad - It's A Book - Dr Larry Rosen

Pick up a good book and power down in peace

Tuesday, 12 March, 2013

Annie Holife@scmp.com

Larry Rosen, a professor and research psychologist at California State University, came to Hong Kong recently to talk about the impact of digital technologies on Generation C, the connected generation of young people born since 1995. As he shared the findings from his studies, many of his observations reverberated with me and my peers.

I can relate to the negative effects of continually going off the task at hand each time I hear a "ding". Until Rosen's talk, I considered myself to be multitasking. In fact, I was task-switching and being rather unproductive.

In one study, Rosen put two groups of teenagers in separate rooms. Both groups were asked to stay there while waiting to go to another area to participate in a study. In fact, the study was observing the two groups while they waited.

Both groups were told that mobile phone use in the rooms was prohibited. The first group was permitted to keep their phones with them, and the second group was asked to leave their phones at the door.

After 15 minutes, the research team observed that both groups followed instructions and did not engage in any phone use. However, while the students in the group who had their phones waited patiently, those in the second group began to exhibit symptoms of anxiety. The phoneless students were restless, tense and apprehensive. A term has been coined for those who exhibit this kind of stress - "nomophobia", the fear of being out of mobile phone contact and missing out ("nomo" meaning "no mobile").

Rosen's talk helped me to reflect on my own bad habits. I became more aware of my task-switching tendencies as well as my need to get connected as soon as I have a free minute.

One day, as my two daughters were role playing, I overheard the older one tell her sister: "OK, this time I'm the baby and you are the mummy." So, my younger daughter climbed onto my chair and started tapping the keys on my computer. Her actions underscored my need to wean myself from the digital world and be more connected with my real world. So, I've started by staying offline and enjoying the view when I'm travelling by car, and turning off my e-mail application when I'm writing this column.

If you also have mild nomophobia, you might enjoy two picture books. Lane Smith's It's a Book is a tongue-in-cheek look at a donkey's attempts to understand what a book is. "How do you scroll down?" and "Where's your mouse?" are just two of his many questions, to which the book-reading monkey patiently and repeatedly answers: "It's a book."

Readers familiar with Margaret Wise Brown's classic book Goodnight Moon will laugh out loud at Goodnight iPad, a parody written by - get this - Ann Droyd. Every buzzword in our brave new world is cleverly worked into this rhyme, which looks and reads like the original.

Annie Ho is board chairwoman of Bring Me A Book Hong Kong, a non-profit organisation dedicated to improving children's literacy by reading aloud to them bringmeabook.org.hk

Deirdre McDermott, Walker Books, Children's Book Publisher

Between the lines: children's picture books

Sunday, 24 February, 2013, 12:00am

Annie Hofamilypost@scmp.com

You may not know Deirdre McDermott, but you will know Where's Wally?, Hooray for Fish!,Owl Babies, and Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!. Although McDermott didn't write or illustrate any of these books, she and her colleagues at Walker Books have been instrumental in creating these and many other well-loved books for more than 30 years.

A quick scan of the title pages of picture books in our home revealed that many are published by Walker Books, the leading independent publisher of children's books in Britain, or Candlewick Press, its equally successful sister company in the United States. The extensive stable of artists includes the wonderful Mo Willems, timeless illustrator Helen Oxenbury, latest sensation Jon Klassen and teen fiction writer Anthony Horowitz.

I didn't appreciate the role of publishers in the creation of a picture book until I attended a forum on the subject at the Taipei International Book Exhibition. McDermott spoke, along with a French book publisher and literary agents from Turkey and Spain.

Children's books are works of art, so I had always imagined writers and illustrators together presenting their final masterpieces to the publisher. In the way that an artist might take his paintings to a gallery and leave it to the gallery to promote them, I expected a children's book publisher's role in the creative process to be limited to cover art and font type.

It seems that writers and illustrators almost never sit down together to collaborate on a picture book

It turns out that publishing houses do a vast amount more than simply print books and distribute them to booksellers. They lead the creative process from a very early stage. In McDermott's case, when she finds a proposed story that she likes, she will contact an illustrator whose style she believes will best suit the text. Unless the story is presented by an authorial illustrator who will do both the writing and the illustrating, it seems that writers and illustrators almost never sit down together to collaborate on a picture book. With the text and illustrations at hand, McDermott will then work with her team of in-house editors and designers to develop the important elements of placement, graphic emphasis and flow.

What is surprising to me is the reality that, with editors overseeing the text and designers overseeing the visual elements, creating a picture book is not necessarily a didactic experience. The process is so different from the image I always had in my mind: a writer and an artist working closely together in a sun-filled, bookshelf-lined room in a quaint country cottage.

It hadn't occurred to me that Julia Donaldson didn't have to discuss The Gruffalo with Axel Scheffler before he started to illustrate her story, or that Margaret Wise Brown's original manuscript for Goodnight Moon may have begun with: "A wee bunny by the moonlight / was ready to say good night / to his room which was green / and his painting with a funny scene."

The discussions at the forum were a first-hand account of the evolving children's picture book industry. They gave me a deeper understanding beyond what I had learned in my well-thumbed copy of Martin Salisbury and Morag Styles' Children's Picturebooks: The Art of Visual Storytelling, which begins by explaining: "Today's picture book is defined by its particular use of sequential imagery, usually in tandem with a small number of words, to convey meaning. In contrast to the illustrated book, where pictures enhance, decorate and amplify, in the picture book the visual text will often carry much of the narrative value."

As McDermott elaborated in the forum, in a good picture book, the text and pictures should not replicate each other, and it should leave a metaphorical space for the reader's imagination. Successful children's picture books transcend cultures and carry universal themes, such as a mother's love and encouragement helping children overcome a challenging situation.

Another panel member at the forum added: "A really good picture book just 'happens'. It cannot be fabricated because children can sense fabricated books and are turned off by them."

The right combination of writers, illustrators and publishers who meld words and images to create a successful picture book is truly magical.

Annie Ho is board chairwoman of Bring Me A Book Hong Kong, a non-profit organisation dedicate to improving children's literacy by reading aloud to them. bringmeabook.org.hk

SCMP - Famous Illustrators of Classic Stories

From Sunday December 2, 2012 edition of South China Morning Post