Children’s Literature Goes Digital

The webinar will explore the world(s) of contemporary children’s literature, and discuss its multimodal ways of communicating, and understanding.

Date: 17 November 2022

Time: 17:00 – 19:15 CET  (Dublin, London 16:00 – 18:15; Athens, Helsinki 18:00 – 20:15)

Participation Fee: Free of charge

WEBINAR REGISTRATION

*Amount of places is limited. All webinars will be registered and available on the FELA website www.literacyeurope.org after the event.

YOU WILL RECEIVE THE ZOOM LINK TWO DAYS BEFORE THE EVENT.

FELA organises a series of professional thematic online webinars to share the insights and experiences of the FELA community with the FELA community and beyond.
The webinars involve sharing original research, innovative practices and original insights into how e-learning and teaching have been carried out in various professional contexts, ranging across primary, secondary, tertiary, regional and national communities and in literacy associations.

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Programme

17:00 Máirín Wilson, Chair of the Federation of European Literacy Associations

17:05 Áine Ní Ghlinn, Laureate Project: An Bosca Leabharlainne
In her talk, Áine will talk about the Bosca Leabharlainne project: the delivery of more than 60,000 high-quality Irish language books to schools. The residencies for some schools on how to enjoy the books and a booklet on ideas, activities and games encourage the children (and adults) to read (more) and help them to have fun with reading.

17:35 Natalia Kucirkova, Children’s literary experiences with digital books
In her presentation, Natalia will outline some research-informed approaches to exploring and understanding children’s interactive e-books and apps.

18:05 Inge van de Ven and Sonali Kulkarni Epistemic Vigilance: Trust & Distrust in Reading Children’s Literature
Inge and Sonali will give a presentation on literature and reading in the attention economy. They will focus on the unreliable narration in children’s literature, including new forms of literature, and link it to ‘epistemic vigilance’. Can children’s literature offer training in determining whom to trust?

18:35 Niels ‘t Hooft, Creating a better reading experience on the smartphone
Niels will share some of his earlier experiments exploring subtle enhancements to increase the impact of text without distracting from it, as well as more recent designs, like typographic elements that increase the contextual awareness of a book’s structure. Some of the ideas can be traced back to the videogames and social media that he and his colleagues have been inspired by; they’re improving book reading by learning from the very media forms that threaten it.

19:05  Q & A, wrap-up

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Presenters

Áine Ní Ghlinn
is the sixth Laureate na nÓg (Ireland’s Children’s Literature Laureate). She is the first author writing exclusively in the Irish language to be appointed to the role. Áine has written twenty-eight books for children, as well as five collections of poetry for adults. Her ambition as Laureate is to lift the cloak of invisibility from Irish language authors and books, encouraging children and young people to read for pleasure as Gaeilge.
Laureate na nÓg is an initiative of the Arts Council. It is managed and delivered on Council’s behalf by Children’s Books Ireland, and also supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. By honouring an artist of exceptional talent and commitment, Laureate na nÓg champions and celebrates literature for children and young people, inspiring generations of writers, illustrators and readers .

Natalia Kucirkova
is a professor of reading and children’s development at The Open University (UK) and at the University of Stavanger (Norway). Natalia is a passionate advocate for social justice, women’s leadership and embedded research impact; she is especially interested in children’s use of media and technologies. Her particular academic research interests are literacy apps and their personalisation features. In her work, Natalia has emphasised children’s agency and the role of communities in ensuring the highest research impact.

Inge van de Ven
is an assistant professor of Online Culture at Tilburg University’s School of Humanities & Digital Sciences (Netherlands) and is currently a Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow at the University of Stavanger (Norway) where she works on a research project titled ‘TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read): Close and hyper reading of literary texts and the modulation of attention,’ funded by the European Commission.

Sonali Kulkarni
is a lecturer and researcher in Children’s Literature and Media at Tilburg University, as well as a translator. She teaches courses related to children’s literature and media in the Erasmus Mundus International Master in Children’s Literature, Media and Culture. She is also an alumna of the same programme and an Erasmus Mundus Scholarship awardee.

Niels ‘t Hooft
is a writer and entrepreneur, building the future of reading books on small screens at Immer, a startup in Utrecht, The Netherlands, that won the Renew the Book Innovation Award 2021 and is now a ContentShift Accelerator finalist. The Immer Reader app was recently launched in early access. Niels wrote several novels and video games. In his past professional lives, he also was a games media founder, newspaper journalist, Nintendo translator, online games marketeer and digital literature researcher.