For the month of June, our uTaler of the Month is Joanna Marple. The author of uTales book Snow Games wins the title not only for her fantastic book, but also for the worldwide blog tour she recently started to promote her ebook for children. Well done Joanna! To get to know this inspirational author even more, we did a shot interview with her.

Tell us a bit about yourself and how you started making children’s books?
I was born in Cambridge, UK, but from my earliest childhood, I knew I would spend most of my life in different nations, among different cultures. Stories and storytelling are part of what makes us human and unites us around the globe! I was a storyteller before I ever considered writing. At sleepovers, I was the designated one to recount a ghost story! I journalled, wrote newsletters from the African bush and songs in different languages, long before I dared to write seriously. I always felt I had an oral communication gift and wouldn’t be able to transpose this to the written word. Eleven years ago, I talked my way into the job of school librarian, setting up the bilingual school library, here in an International School in the South of France, where I live. I found myself telling stories, once again, and falling in love with children’s literature. Every time a teacher request came for something we didn’t have in the library, I thought, I could write that! 18 months ago, with that inner gut-gurgling assurance, I knew, my life was about to take a very different direction. I came across an online picture book course, joined SCBWI, began writing, and haven’t stopped!

Why have you chosen to become a uTaler and be part of uTales community?
The long answer is in a guest post that I have just written, here. The short version is – while I am preparing myself to approach agents, when I came across uTales, I didn’t see it as an alternative, but rather a complementary possibility. It is an opportunity to publish stories on a serious platform, where I could experience collaboration and editorial feedback in a supportive community, and continue to learn about the craft and business of publishing children’s books. I haven’t abandoned my goal of being traditionally published, but I have this enriching, parallel path in my author’s journey.

What’s your advice to aspiring uTalers?
The opportunity uTales offers for collaboration is wonderful, so enjoy this to the maximum. Take uTales publishing seriously, and write (and revise) your best possible stories: for yourself, for your readers, and hey, for any publishers out there who might be reading!

What’s your favorite children’s book of all time?
Ask me tomorrow and this will change. For today, I am going to say the 1939 classic, MADELINE, by Ludwig Bemelmans (could be my French bias coming through!) As for my favorite Middle Grade novel – BRIDGE TO TEREBITHA, by Katherine Patterson, for all its gutsy realism.

What project of yours are you most excited about right now?
Whatever I am working on right now, as I feel I am bringing to it, all that I have learned in the writing and revising of previous stories. Though I do have a special place in my heart for a picture book I have written about a young Mongolian nomad and a Bactrian camel. This is a severely endangered, and little known, species. I have written a short poem about this camel:

“One hump or two?”

the nomad asked.

“The Bactrian’s bi,” it replied.

“The Dromedary’s one

just aint half as much fun -

we’ve double the bump when you ride!”

                                                                                                                                                                                                   © Joanna Marple, 2011

If you were a famous children’s book character, who would you be and why?
I think I would be Eloise because I was about as sassy and confident as she, aged six. And I would so love to live it up in the New York Plaza for a while!

We welcome all sorts of fantastic books for kids at uTales, but we also need to set some limitations to keep uTales open for kids from all over the world. uTales is a non-denominational platform, offering books for children of all belief systems, faiths, and religions. While uTales publishes retellings of religion-based fables, religion-based folktales, and stories from various historical religious texts, uTales does not publish books that uTales deem to be proselytizing. We hope all uTalers understand and respect this!

If you want your design to become the uTales’ cover photo at http://www.facebook.com/uTales, simply send a file or a link to info@utales.com.

Every now and then, we will pick a new winner who will get their design of uTales’ cover photo featured on our Facebook page for at least a week!

There is a strong ongoing trend of turning picture books into ebooks and iPad apps, and uTales is very much (and proudly so) a part of that trend. However, the new digital opportunities are perhaps not all good, and we must think twice before proclaiming all ebook apps for kids as the best thing since sliced bread. It sure is fun and engaging for kids to “read” iPad picture books filled with mini-games, auto-play, videos, dictionary and coloring functionality. Kids have fun using these features, they learn many things, and parents can get some rest while the iPad acts as babysitter. We, however, now have a different view on what ebooks for kids should be and what uTales should be, and the reason for this is what recent research tells us.

We at uTales strongly believe that books should never be replaced by games. Games and high-levels of interactivity sure have their place in a child’s development, but we should be careful not to have them replace books. The current merging of traditional books, videos, and games is fun and perhaps “feels” like the future to many people, but it risks eliminating many of the benefits that the traditional picture book brings children. We in the uTales team take this very seriously. We have a responsibility to make uTales as good for your children’s development as we possibly can, and that’s why we currently steer clear of most of the super-interactive ebook functionality you find in many other apps.

In the book The Brain that Changes Itself, Norman Doidge M.D. presents many studies that we can learn from. For instance, he shows how television watching and electronic media, such as video games, correlate with brain problems:

“A recent study of more than twenty-six hundred toddlers shows that early exposure to television between the ages of one and three correlates with problems paying attention and controlling impulses later in childhood. [...] Much of the harm from television and other electronic media, such as music videos and computer games, comes from their affect on attention. [...] Television, music videos, and video games, all of which use television techniques, unfold at a much faster pace than real life, and they are getting faster, which causes people to develop an increased appetite for high-speed transitions in those media. [...] The cost is that such activities as reading, complex conversation, and listening to lectures become more difficult.”

In another recent study from West Chester University of Pennsylvania, Drs. Heather Schugar, Carol Smith, Jordan Schugar, and Chris Penny looked at how struggling fourth- through eight-grade readers’ decoding, fluency, and comprehension compared when reading from a traditional picture book versus reading from an interactive e-book on the iPad (i.e. books including auto-play, mini-games etc.). The findings tell us that we must thread into the digital book space with great care (which is also the conclusion from a previous study of Nook ebooks read by college students). Here are a few of the findings from the West Chester study:

“It was immediately evident that middle grades participants were eager to read interactive e-books on the iPad. [...] …students appeared engaged as they interacted with the texts’ features, made impromptu comments to their protocol administrator, and asked to reread the electronic versions of texts they had already read in both formats.”

It perhaps comes as no surprise that kids love the iPad and love reading books on this cool device. Recent statistics from Nielsen confirm that “70 percent of children in households with tablet computers used these devices”. There is something attractive in a tablet that printed books cannot offer it seems, and this platform can hopefully attract more kids to start reading (and not only play games).

“Although participants had similar decoding abilities for both traditional and interactive electronic versions of the four picture books used in this study, their rate of reading was dramatically slower when reading from an interactive e-book than when they were reading a traditional picture book. [...] The most interesting differences occurred in students’ comprehension of the texts.  For three of the four texts, participants exhibited considerably better comprehension for the traditional picture books than for the interactive e-books.  After reading Sir Charlie Stinky Socks and the Really Big Adventure in e-book format, two participants expressed to their administrators that they had no idea what they had just read. [...] …participants had more difficulty answering questions that required them to refer back to their background knowledge (e.g., Author and Me and On My Own questions) when reading from the e-versions of the picture books. “

Here is where the problems of the highly interactive ebooks/iPad apps become evident. They are simply so interactive, and generate such intense activity in the readers’ minds, that the rate of reading and the comprehension of the text are actually worsened. The way we see it is that these books let games, videos, and auto-play take over from the text and storytelling. They are no longer picture books, but rather “game-ified” picture books, which is something completely different.

Perhaps even more importantly, we should not let “babysitting” devices replace the shared experience of reading picture books together with your child. Even if the platform for reading now is digital, we should still read together with our children. This is the conclusion in many scientific papers and books, e.g. Child Psychology: a Handbook of Contemporary Issues, published in 2006 by New York Psychology Press:

“Whether observed at home or in preschool, it [adult-child conversation] is consistently related to general measures of language progress. Dialogues about storybooks are particularly effective. They expose children to greath bredth of language knowledge, including how to communicate in a clear, coherent narrative style – a skill that undoubtedly contributes to the association between joint storybook reading and literacy development.”

In her book Child Development (8th edition), Laura E. Berk also concludes that the quality of children’s home literacy experiences strongly predicts vocabulary size, and that parent-child storybook reading plays a major role in this.

So in short, here are the pros and cons of digital picture books as we see them:

Pros (or “Why uTales is digital”):

• Digital devices facilitate global distribution of great picture books to more children. That’s why both online ebooks and iPad apps are great as platforms.
• Digital “libraries” let us have access to many, many, many different books wherever and whenever we feel like it. It simply makes picture books a part of everyday life and offers much greater variety for kids to learn from.
• Digital publishing lowers the threshold for creating picture books. No need for the bottlenecks of the traditional publishing world. Now anyone with enough talent to write and illustrate a great picture book can do so and get published quickly.
• Kids simply seem to love digital devices, such as the iPad, and that means they make great platforms for education.

Cons (or “Why uTales is not making children’s books ‘too’ digital”):

• An iPad “babysitting” a child with an interactive app can never replace reading a picture book together with a parent or teacher. The human bonding is a key part of the picture book experience.  Games or auto-playing books can never replace the magic of bonding, and they don’t spark children’s imagination in the same way.
• The child’s brain is especially plastic during the first few years, and we must be very aware of how ebooks affect the child’s development. High intensity might be fun and catch the attention of the toddler, but with it comes very serious risks of encountering problems later in life. We take pride in having the storytelling, the illustrations and the text be the focus of each book. In some books, simple animations or sounds can add to the story, but they should never be “too” intense or turn the book into something other than a book.

We think it is key to, early in life, introduce children to reading, texts, and illustrations that spark their imagination. We also think it is key that for the smallest ones, iPad apps and ebooks should be enjoyed together with other, real and loving people, such as parents, grandparents, teachers or older siblings. That’s why uTales offers ebooks for kids in the way that we do; with a clear focus on your child’s development. We think ebooks like that are truly great for children (even if the headline might have misled you there for a while)!

We think about this all the time and we will keep following the research on this topic with great interest. What do you think? Are we making sense in our statement against the “gamification” of books, or should picture books be freely expanded with games and video?  Please let us know in the comments, on Twitter, or on our Facebook page.

For this month, the obvious choice was our very own Anders Lindholm. Anders has not only created numerous uTales ebooks, but is also the man who came up with the idea for uTales’ very first community-created ebook known as The Friendship Alphabet. So we did a little interview with Anders for you to enjoy!

Anders Lindholm

Tell us a bit about yourself and how you started making children’s books?
I was born in Stockholm, Sweden. Went to art school, started my career as illustrator by working for a lot of Art Directors, mostly painting realistic stuff for advertising. At the same time teaching illustration at some of the most popular art schools in Stockholm at the time – some 25 years ago. Eventually a got an agent in London and it all just boomed. I loved it, but after 10-15 years, after starting a new art school and taking a big part in developing the educating student´s, it was time to focus on the family. It was back then my interest for children’s books really started, with my two daughters being born.

I actually tried to get story published, with no text, only illustrations. Impossible! most of the publishers said, and I have been chasing some one that could illustrate my stories with text, ever since.

Illustration by Anders Lindholm

Why have you chosen to become a uTaler and be part of uTales community?
It´s basically Nils fault! I had been working with him in another project, and when he asked if I wanted to join and help to develop this crazy idea of his, well let´s just say – I´m a sucker for crazy creative challenges. And It gave me a terrific chance to test my ideas and to try different styles – and of course, the most important – it so much fun!!

What’s your advice to aspiring uTalers?
Never give up, never throw a way an idea just because you yourself have doubts about it´s quality. Use uTales to test and get feedback on your ideas. That´s something you cant get enough of. It does not matter if you are a writer, illustrator or both, you can actually learn how to create a children’s book right here!

Illustration by Anders Lindholm

What’s your favorite children’s book of all time?
Oh that´s difficult, i have a lot of different but I tend to like the simple clean where there is a good balance between illustration and text.

NOT A BOX by Antoinette Portis and The Pigeon Wants a Puppy! Are two very good examples of what i like.

Illustration by Anders Lindholm

What project of yours are you most excited about right now?
The next one I guess. That would be a series of monster books that will soon be published.

If you were a famous children’s book character, who would you be and why?
I’d like to think I’m the pig who made his house out of brick, but in reality I’m probably the pig who made his house out of straw.

Illustration by Anders Lindholm

Illustration by Anders Lindholm

In a statement shared today, Opal clarifies that they have entered this partnership with uTales mainly to find new ways of marketing their books and to facilitate sharing and promotion of the books in digital channels. The partnership covers only a selection of Opal books that are suitable for the uTales ebook format.

We are very happy and proud to be working on this one-time partnership with Opal!

This is a very unique thing indeed! The ebook is called The Friendship Alphabet and is all about teaching the alphabet to children, while promoting friendship. It also showcases different storytelling and illustrative styles from all over the world. The creative friendship behind this project has been amazing to witness, and even more gratifying is the fact that it has all been done in the name of charity. All proceeds from the ebook will support Pencils of Promise and their work to build new schools in developing countries.

Check out The Friendship Alphabet on uTales now!

Thank you to all the amazing uTalers taking part in this project!