I'm sure by now you all know I'm passionate about kids. No wonder, then, that I thought of encoding a children's book. Not knowing much about encoding, I thought it would be fun to see what I can do about books with sounds. A beautiful example of such a book is "The Quiet Cricket" by Eric Carle.
There aren't any images that I can post except the one on the right, but it gives you an idea as to the size of the book, the amount of text, and the type of illustrations.
Here is a video of someone reading the book out loud. Pay special attention to 3:11, where you hear the cricket sound. It really is a marvelous book, and kids absolutely adore it, even when they are old and jaded.
And now, to the encoding. Some things would have been pretty straight forward: maybe tagging the different characters, their salutations ("Good morning!", "Hi!", "Good evening"), and the repetitive cricket's part. Images would be a challenge, of course, since XML is all about text, while in children's books the images play just as important a role, if not more important. For now, all I can see that can be done with images is simply display them alongside the text (using a url), and/or describe them, if that is seen as valuable. But I suppose this is the big question: why is it valuable? I could see the need for a description when encoding something like the King James Bible we looked at, where the image is very textual (political, in fact). But what is the use of describing the position of the praying mantis' arms? Or the colours of the dots on the luna moth's wings? They need to be seen, not read about, so had I tried encoding the book, I wouldn't have described the pictures.
Finally, the sound. It comes as a surprise at the very end, because the cricket was silent beforehand, but now it can "chirp". So, somehow, this sound needs to come at the reader/viewer all of a sudden, without having to click on a link. True, in the paper-based book the reader has to flip a page in order to hear the sound, but flipping a page is simply what one does when reading a book, and so the motion is not out of the ordinary, whereas clicking on a link is definitely a "purposeful" action, if you know what I mean. How to you create surprise using code? And how do you encode sound? If, like with images, it's descriptive, then I see no reason to describe it. As I said above, it should be heard, not read.
I'm glad I decided not to try to encode such a book. I think it would have been less than fruitful, and very frustrating. Perhaps some books simply aren't meant to be encoded?
Hi Polina,
ReplyDeleteYour Eric Carle book is a great example of a why encoding is such an interesting practice. In your post you demonstrate a deep understanding of the intention of the book, and what would be lost in encoding it.
Highly visual texts like children's books seem very resistive to encoding simply because the materiality of the book itself is a large part of the experience. It reminds me of Andrew Steeves and his mention of books as tools. When children are little we often let them play with child appropriate representations of tools. Little toy hammers, or little toy wrenches. Children's books are as much instructive and interactive as they are scaled models of books as tools. The paper is a bit tougher and glossier, and the images are more colourful. I can see why you have come to the conclusion that encoding this tool would be about as useful as encoding a hammer.