Influence of the digital environment on literature for youth: radical change in the handheld book - Children and the Digital Library

Library Trends, Spring, 1997 by Eliza T. Dresang

Abstract

A radical change, an unalterable transformation in form and content, is underway in handheld books for youth, influenced by the digital environment of the 1990s. The multilayered, nonlinear, nonsequential, graphic, interactive nature of digitized communication and the affinity of children for it are examined. Numerous examples of handled literature for youth reflecting these digital influences are woven into the discussion. A new framework for literary criticism and evaluation, taking account of the radical changes in literature for youth, is proposed. The author suggests that: (1) those involved with criticism or evaluation of children's literature will take account of the constructs of radical change in order to employ an appropriate holistic context for examination; (2) children's increasing freedom from the dominance of a limiting adult definition of their capabilities will be reflected in how their handheld literature is structured; (3) printed handheld literature will continue to be calibrated to changes in the digitized environment; and (4) further radical changes in literature for youth will develop in a nonlinear, nonhierarchical fashion.

Introduction

The influence of the digital world on literature for young people extends well beyond materials produced in actual digital form. The extent to which the digitized format has affected or is reflected in the familiar handheld book for youth is substantial. A radical change, an unalterable transformation in form and content, is underway in the arena of print materials for children, a manifestation that is natural and inevitable in an increasingly electronic society.

Intermittent precursors to the transformation that is permeating much of children's literature can be found well before the current digitized world emerged into full public view and the rapid move toward ubiquity of the computer began. The synergy between words and pictures in the nineteenth-century illustrations of Randolph Caldecott and the nonlinear text in Lewis Carroll's Alice books are similar to certain literary characteristics manifested in contemporary books influenced by the digital environment. Important to note is that these and others of the scattered precursors to the many radically changed books for youth now identifiable do not represent the beginning of a trend or linear progression that can be traced to the present but were produced by artists whose understanding of children and of communication was far ahead of their time.

A pivotal difference exists between past environments and the milieu in which the literature is now created. An environment which calls for pondering "the child and the digital library" provides a setting which, while not necessarily a primary cause, is a catalyst for the fundamental alteration which is taking place in the body of literature for children. The nature of the change suggests a calibration of the literature -- unpremeditated and often unrecognized by its creators -- to match certain features of the digital environment. One relevant feature of this environment is an increasing understanding of children, their abilities, and how they interact with information resources, including the book, in the electronic age.

Some of the differences in today's literature for youth result from advances in the technical aspects of publishing -- i.e., the replacement of such traditional tasks as typesetting and color separation with electronic processes affects what the end product can be. These procedures are often economically more advantageous and provide more flexibility to authors and illustrators in how literature can be created and presented. The focus of this analysis, however, is on the changes that are taking place in the content of the books rather than their manufacture. Concentration is on how these alterations reflect similar properties of digitized information rather than on how these transformations occur. An assumption underlying all that is said that computerized production process makes many of these changes possible.

Radically changed literature for youth calls for a new approach to literary criticism, a new acknowledgment of what constitutes the act of reading itself, one which is appropriate in an electronic era and can allow the critic -- be she or he scholar or librarian -- to move easily from one mode of literary presentation to another. Dresang (in press) has analyzed and categorized multiple changes that are occurring with youth and their literature in the digital world. This article focuses on only one of the three major types of changes identified by the author in her book and presents only a portion of the critical framework for examining children's literature of the digital age. Even this partial examination of how the particularly germane capabilities of digital information translate and successfully incorporate with pertinent features of books offer insight into often ignored relationships between traditional and electronic modes. The constructs of this new paradigm can ease the tension and build a bridge of understanding, a way of communication, between those who embrace the new and those who value the traditional presentation of literary matter for youth. It can pave the way for an expansive model of a digital library for children.