When Graeme Base’s richly illustrated picture book Animalia was published in 1986, it quickly became a staple in homes and libraries around the country. It’s latest incarnation as part of The Graeme Base Educational Suite, while seemingly popular in education circles, defies categorisation. Equal parts interactive storytelling, enhanced ebook, reference database, and literacy learning tool, this app tries to do it all – but does it succeed?
This example of digital literature embraces Bowler’s notion that “contemporary children’s books are different because of children’s experiences with hypertextual, networked digital texts” (p. 35). This interactive experience has been a growing norm in children’s digital literature as we move away from simple ebooks to more interactive experiences of texts. Animalia is not an ebook, but an entire multi-faceted app – heavily linked and interactive with a wide array of entertaining and educational activities and prompts.
Roskos (2012) states that “the virtual explosion in apps has transformed the traditional storybook of early childhood into a highly interactive, multi-media literacy experience” – of which Animalia is a key example. While this text has engaging and entertaining aspects – full colour, a range of voice actors embodying the animal ‘characters’, and a gamification of literacy, I am hesitant to declare this a text of pure enjoyment. While it appears to be designed primarily as a learning resource. Its approach to instruction is clearly well thought out with a range of activities catering for differentiated stages, I feel that the richness and beauty of the original text is severely lessened in this digital presentation – despite the accessibility provided by the audio components. What’s more, despite being a learning tool, I am hard pressed to see it being used within the classroom (understanding however that I am of a secondary background) and would only imagine the interactive activities being halved by use at home without a partner against which to play and learn. Roskos (2012) states that while these digital storytelling tools are becoming increasingly popular, “less is known … about how these new literacy tools “work” in different activity settings in preschools [compared] to stories and print.” It is this point of contention that I echo. Animalia is, undoubtably, a carefully designed and marketed app. But is it ultimately reaching its full potential as digital literature within a classroom setting?
I believe that Animalia and books/apps like it are the stepping stone to something greater. This example of digital literature is an early example of the fully realised hypertexted interactive learning resources of our future. Growing trends in digital resourcing indicate that classroom print texts and learning resources may soon be a thing of the past, with leading educational publishers exploring the hyper immersive digital textbooks replete with embedded resources, videos and all manner of interactivity. Animalia is a wonderful first step in the primary education sphere but that development of this trend is still ongoing.
References
AppBooks. (2011). Animalia for iPad (version 3.1) [mobile application software]. Retrieved from https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/animalia-education-family/id1275397953?mt=8
Bowler, L., Morris, R., Cheng, I-L., Al-Issa, R., Romine, B., & Leiberling, L. (2012). Multimodal stories: LIS students explore reading, literacy, and library service through the lens of “The 39 Clues”. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 53(1), 32-48
Roskos, K., Burstein, K., Shang, Y., & Gray, E. (2014). Young children’s engagement with e-books at school: does device matter? Sage Open, 4, pp. 1-9. DOI: 10.1177/2158244013517244. Retrieved from http://sgo.sagepub.com/content/4/1/2158244013517244