O’Neill, K. (2016). The Tea Dragon Society. Onipress. https://teadragonsociety.com/
The Tea Dragon Society is a gentle, all-ages fantasy webcomic, by New Zealand author and artist Katie O’Neill. Readers are introduced to a world of tea dragons, named after the tea leaves and flowers that grow from their bodies. The protagonist is young goblin Greta, an apprentice blacksmith – her mother is the master blacksmith – who finds a lost tea dragon. Greta learns the ancient and dying art of tea dragon care-taking, while forging new friendships. Themes include friendship, community and traditions, patience, identity, and caring for other living things. This world-building webcomic was originally published with weekly instalments online; a new page uploaded and open for comments on Sunday evenings during 2016-2017. This ‘update schedule’, is a temporal feature specific to the webcomic format, which has been a publishing trend using Web 2.0 technologies since the 1990s (Grifka, 2015; Moorefield-Lang & Gavigan, 2012). Eight selection criteria are used for this review, adapted from Kluver (as cited in Kucirkova, 2018), the University of Stavanger (2019), and Walsh (2013). The criteria: literary merit, aesthetic quality, representation, digital enhancements and extras, access, navigation, security and advertising, and authorship, relate to digital literature for children aged 8-12 years.
The Tea Dragon Society performs well with regards to access, navigation, and security and advertising. It is free to read online, across multiple platforms, including Microsoft, Android and Apple operating systems. The website has a refreshingly calm tone and is free from advertising and pop-ups. However, parents and educators should be aware that from the Links page, readers can easily access webcomics which are very different to The Tea Dragon Society, rated for 13+ years. The comments section, a valuable feature for participatory reader interaction, may pose some online safety issues if not monitored by parents or educators. Navigation of the webcomic is smooth, with readers able to click on illustrations to move to the next page, or to use the hyperlinked arrows to travel to various and specific points in the text.
The aesthetic quality of The Tea Dragon Society is excellent. O’Neill’s artwork conveys influences of manga and anime styles, and the imaginative setting is depicted with whimsical landscapes and village settings, framed with delicate, botanical illustrations. The text/font is somewhat feint and small, however, they are easily enlarged on iOS and Android devices. Attractive artwork in warm yet soft colours is supported by a clean and uncluttered layout and interface. The University of Stavanger (2019) emphasizes the importance of quality illustrations in digital literature for children, which depict diverse characters, including their emotions, movement and actions. O’Neill skilfully portrays these elements with characters who are diverse in their physical features (e.g. horns, hair, antlers, tails etc.), skin tones, ages, body types, abilities/disabilities, and family structures. The Tea Dragon Society is a gold standard exemplar for the representation criteria, in the way that it normalises diversity in children’s literature.
The Tea Dragon Society has excellent literary merit. With a complex plot based on the character development of a diverse cast of characters, who aren’t constrained by gender stereotypes, O’Neill’s language and dialogue is well-written. Grammatically correct and using accurate capitalisation and punctuation, the narrative is thoughtfully organised into seasonal chapters. O’Neill’s email address is provided on her ‘About’ page, as are links to her social media accounts. While this demonstrates the capability of digital platforms to expand and strengthen author-reader relationships (Skains, 2010), it isn’t a suitable platform for primary school readers and contexts.
The digital enhancements and extras of The Tea Dragon Society webcomic are minimal and subtle. So much so, that it could be argued that this text isn’t actually ‘digital literature’, as it isn’t algorithmic, as defined by Heckman, D. and O’Sullivan, J. (2018) . The webcomic has successfully been published as a printed graphic novel. I would argue, however, that if we broadened the definition of digital literature to be an umbrella term for a wider range of literary digital texts, we can ensure we’re catering for the diverse readers in our primary schools. For example, not all children would enjoy and/or benefit from reading fragmented, non-linear digital texts (Lamb, 2011). It is important that we recommend and provide a range of quality digital literature, for student learning and their reading pleasure.
The Tea Dragon Society has no audio features or narration functions, being pleasantly quiet. Hyperlinks to extras include an ‘Almanac’ and ‘Cast’ pages, which provide readers with details about the fantasy world and its characters, such as the particular diets, behaviour and habits of tea dragons. This world-building component, particularly of fantasy and science fiction texts, is an online, literary trend which has been expanding over the last 20 years. Skains (2010) discussed “online novel communities” as providing a space for discourse between the author and reader. The Tea Dragon Society includes a comments function, mainly used when the new pages were uploaded, with the author responding with thoughtful detail about specific characters. Readers are still able to post comments.
Overall, The Tea Dragon Society is a delightful webcomic for all ages. Refreshingly calm and simple, it may be an effective hook into digital realms, for those not usually inclined to engage with online reading environments. Perhaps one day, O’Neill’s tea dragons will return to the digital space, accompanied by augmented or virtual reality enhancements, complete with aromatic scents of herbal tea.
References
Grifka, M. (2015). Webcomic. The Chicago School of Media Theory. https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/webcomic/
Heckman, D., & O’Sullivan, J. (2018). Electronic literature: Contexts and poetics. In K. M. Price & R. Siemens (Eds.) Literary Studies in a Digital Age, Modern Language Association.
Kucirkova, N. (2018). How and Why to Read and Create Children’s Digital Books: A Guide for Primary Practitioners. UCL Press.
Lamb, A. (2011). Reading redefined for a transmedia universe. Learning & Leading with Technology, (39)3, 13-17.
Moorefield-Lang, H. & Gavigan, K. (2012). These aren’t your father’s: The new world of digital graphic novels. Knowledge Quest, 40(3), 30-35.
Skains, R.L. (2010). The shifting author-reader dynamic: Online novel communities as a bridge from print to digital literature. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 16(1), 95-111.
University of Stavanger. (2019). Best practice design. Children’s Digital Books. https://www.childrensdigitalbooks.com/design/
Walsh, M. (2013). Literature in a digital environment. In L. McDonald, A literature companion for teachers (pp. 181-185). Primary English Teaching Association.
