eBook Review: All Aboard the Dinotrain!

Title: All Aboard the Dinotrain

Author: Deb Lund

Illustrator: Howard Fine

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Provider: TumbleBooks

Age: K-3

OMG!  DINOSAURS AND TRAINS!

We don't really need a review for this one, obviously,  because of the following equation:

dinosaurs + trains = awesome

(We'll do a review anyway cuz that's how we roll)

Deb Lund and Howard Fine do a decent enough job of this only slightly awkwardly rhyming romp through a land where dinosaurs ride on top of trains and end up being tossed into a gorge without anyone being hurt.  Herbivores and carnivores co-exist peacefully, one of the brontosaurs has a beehive hairdo,  and "dino" exists as a prefix that can be added to any lexical category.  Kirkus called this book a "hilarious new brouhaha" while PW states that it's "dino-mite."  It translates well into an eBook, too, what with all the "roller coaster dinoride" action.  The animation is a bit choppy at times, but that may have been done purposely to kick things up a notch when the train barrels down a hill and magically flies across a collapsed trestle.  There's a "we think we can!" nod to Watty Piper's The Little Engine That Could , but All Aboard the Dinotrain won't be a classic.

An interesting note in Tumblebooks- if you pause the eBook, some of the animation remains- in this case, smoke from the smokestack kept billowing as Little J and I readjusted ourselves on the couch.  We used the Kindle Fire for this one, and it didn't display well.  The Tumblebooks dashboard takes up too much space and I couldn't get rid of the address bar or the tabs in the browser.

Amazon acquired Marshall Cavendish US Children’s Books Titles

Amazon is going to convert the whole catalogue of Marshall Cavendish's children's books (mostly picture books) into eBooks.

Anybody want to play Monopoloy?

Read more here.

eBook Vocabulary: Media Literacy

Well, whaddya know!  There is an entire professional organization dedicated to Media Literacy.  The National Association for Media Literacy Education publishes the Journal of Media Literacy Education and provides us with a handy dandy definition.


"Media literacy [consists] of a series of communication competencies, including the ability to ACCESS, ANALYZE, EVALUATE, and COMMUNICATE information in a variety of forms, including print and non-print messages."


Whoa.  Ok.  That's very broad.  Luckily they break down the definition further:

• Media refers to all electronic or digital means and print or artistic visuals used to transmit messages.
• Literacy is the ability to encode and decode symbols and to synthesize and analyze messages.
• Media literacy is the ability to encode and decode the symbols transmitted via media and the ability to synthesize, analyze and produce mediated messages.
• Media education is the study of media, including ‘hands on’ experiences and media production.
• Media literacy education is the educational field dedicated to teaching the skills associated with media literacy.

But- it's not really literacy, is it?

Yes!  It is!  Media literacy comprises much more than the linear orthographical decoding of yesteryear.  Our kids are digital natives who need to know how to comprehend and utilize multi-sensory information from all different types of devices.  Words, images and sound are all legitimate purveyors of information requiring different skills for processing.


In order for kids to become useful people in our increasingly digital world, they're going to have to be proficient not only in using current technology, but in figuring out new technology as it becomes available.  Traditional literacy was basically a skill that you learned once and you were set for life; media literacy is a wider set of continually evolving, increasingly sophisticated skills.


So how does this relate to eBooks?  
Reading eBooks together is an awesome way to give our little monsters the skills to figure out what they're going to need to know in our big bad world of sensory overload.  If we can give them good quality eLiterature with well designed multimedia extras we start them on the path to media literacy.  

eArticle review: The Children's eBook Revisited

In my last post I mused about what an eBook actually is.  Warren Buckleitner has some ideas on the topic.  This article was published in 2011, and is based on data collected between April and December of 2010, which means the information is obsolete now, given how fast eBook technology is changing.  Let's take a look anyway, just for kicks.

This peer-reviewed article gives a snapshot of eBooks for kids.  It includes an eBook Glossary of Terms and a (little too much) history about eBooks.  

The author makes a distinction between eReaders and Animated Stories.  This is confusing for me because I think of eReaders as being the device upon which you view an eBook, but I do see what he's getting at.  Many of the eBooks we've read are basically just digitized versions of a print book with some minor animation, highlighted text and audio.  Here's what he says the differences are:

eReaders

Less interactive
Easier to adapt from a print book 
A PDF file is the most common and least interactive examples of an eReader. 
Features might include:
• Font control (color, shape & size) 
• Navigation helpers (tilt, page swiping, screen rotation) 
• Word search features (ability to type a word, and jump to the word). 
• Minimal frosting (e.g., hidden animations, popups or activities) 
• Cut and copy to your clipboard. 
• Hyperlinks, both internal and external. 
• Decoding helpers (narration, word highlighting, pronunciation, language toggling and/or translation).


Animated Stories
More interactive
Many offer two modes: Read to Me (narrated text) or Read it Myself (just text).
The author claims that the interactivity in animated stories is based on Apple's 8 pillars of the iPad:
1. A large multi-touch screen that can register multiple fingers at once, as well as how hard the fingers are pushing and in what direction
2. Motion detection in the form of a tilt or a shake
3. Microphone captures your voice for story narration
4. Cameras that can be used for scanning bar codes or seeing pictures
5. Speakers
6. Long lasting batteries and enough internal memory to store hundreds of apps
7. Internet access that is fast, free (if you are in a Wi-Fi zone) and smart
8. Apps

What I found most interesting about this article was the author's analysis of the various interactivity techniques commonly used in animated stories (hot spots, hunt and find, motion based input and motion tabs).  In the "academic disclaimer" at the beginning of the article, Buckleitner states that "the definition of 'literacy' goes beyond decoding and encoding," and goes on to describe how this new fangled medium is not just entertainment, but rather an important pedagogical and diagnostic tool in literacy and language education.  The multimedia environment provided by eBooks (animated stories, potato, potahto) can not only support traditional literacy development through the use of built-in dictionaries, language toggles, highlighting or sound-it-out functions; but also the development of what we now call multiliteracy, or media literacy.  But that's a whole other discussion.

Buckleitner, W. (2011). THE CHILDREN'S EBOOK REVISITED. Children's Technology Review, 19(1), 6.

I don't read eBooks with my kid! Oh wait! Yes I do!

I had a lovely chance meeting with a good friend of mine and her 4 year old daughter today.  We discussed our use of eBooks with our respective progeny.

"We don't really use eBooks.  Oh wait! Yes we do! We downloaded this one ages ago.  Here Maryanne, show us how you find Lulu's Brew!" said Mom.

Maryanne went on to navigate her mom's iPhone, find the app, start it up, then turn pages to show me how it worked.  They DO read eBooks, they just didn't think of it that way.

When I asked where she got it and if she paid for it, she had no idea.  It was just like any other app on her phone- something had tickled her fancy and she clicked on it.

Why the disjunct? Is it a matter of nomenclature?  Is "ebook" too narrow?  Too broad? Too jargony?  Do people use this stuff with their kids without knowing that some library nincompoop calls it an eBook?

What IS an eBook?

Hang tight.  I'm gonna figure it out.

eBook Review: Lola in the Library

After our disappointing experience with another library-themed eBook, I thought we should find a GOOD one to share.  I found an old favourite: Anna McQuinn and Rosalind Beardshaw's Lola at the Library.  We used TumbleBooks on our Galaxy Tab again.

I used to use a paper copy of this book with K-3 class visits at the library, and I was interested to see how it would be presented in eBook form.  I was pleasantly surprised with the pacing the narrator used- it was slow and articulate, performed in a style that emulates a child's speaking patterns.  Perfect for the text.

When presenting this book with school children I always skipped the page about Lola and her mom going for cappuccino after visiting the library. It seemed out of place then, but now that I have Little J I totally get it.  We go out for coffee before or after visiting the library, and I give him some foam off my mocha.  Art imitating life!

eBook Review: One Duck Stuck

Phyllis Root and Jane Chapman's One Duck Stuck is another wonderful storytime book, and it transfers very well to the eBook medium.  Repetitive text wears on adult ears after awhile, but Little J chimed in every time a new animal said "We can! We can!"

You know what they say about young children: "repetition is good, repetition is good, repetition is good!"

Cute illustrations, good rhythm and a funny twist at the end make this a sophisticated read for little ones, and caregivers can be happy with the inclusion of numerals and onomatopoeia. The narrator is quite animated and makes good use of her sibilants.

I thought there was too much of a time gap in the narration between the main text and the secondary text; you feel like you're waiting for the other shoe to drop until "Help! Help!" begins.

*****Spoiler Alert*****

Best part of the book?  The "SPLUCK!"