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Sunday, June 05, 2005Introduction  Over the last 3 years or so, I've been gathering children's and young adult texts that include some level of technology interaction, typically involving computers and other digital technologies. My goals are two-fold: to examine how these texts present and situate technology as well as to explore ways to use these texts with pre-K to 12th grade readers.This presentation has been an opportunity to begin sharing the information that I have been gathering on my bookshelves. My ultimate goal is to develop an ongoing source of information for K12 teachers who may use these texts in their classrooms as well as for college teachers who are exploring how students' literacy skills are shaped by children's literature before they reach the college classroom. Several basic questions frame my exploration:
This presentation is broken into the following sections:
Some Preliminary Notes/Warnings
 The
earliest picture book that I've found, The Little Red Computer (McGraw
Hill, 1969) entertains
listeners with the tale of a computer that doesn't understand numbers but ultimately
succeeds because it is "a computer with a
mind of its own" (27). The images and story demonstrate the tension between
an objective, modern society and a humanistic desire for nature and emotions.
Like many children's books, The Little Red Computer weaves a didactic
message, but it is one what really has little to do with technologies. Instead,
the personified computer simply represents the value of the human over value
of the machine. More recent picture books shift the focus to lessons about computers and technology. Kermit Learns How Computers Work (Prima Publications, 1993) and Kermit Learns Windows (Prima Publications, 1993) set out to teach readers something about keyboards, mice, and software—all from the perspective of everyone's favorite Muppet. Getting your documentation from Sesame Street may seem strange to readers today, but remember thatplenty of children, teenagers, and adults have gotten advice on how to use their computers from an animated paper clip.  Picture
books such as Franklin and the Computer (Kids Can Press, 2003) and Arthur's
Computer Disaster (Marc Brown, 1999) focus on the kind of lessons you
expect to hear on PSAs:
[T]his episode pits Arthur against his mother for computer time. He wants to play Deep, Dark Sea, but she has forbidden him to touch her PC while she is at work. However, the silent machine proves to be more temptation than Arthur can withstand. Pal Buster encourages him; D.W. predicts doom. A tug of war, a crashing keyboard, and an inoperable computer follow. Desperate attempts to fix it fail; in the end, Mom returns home, Arthur confesses, suffers the consequences, and learns a valuable lesson when Mom offers, "Always call me with your problems."  While
these books focus on the troubles children can get into with computers, the plots
could just as easily be about anything that the child overuses or uses without
permission. These books follow the same structures as such titles as The
Berenstain Bears and Too Much TV (Random House, 1984) and Arthur's TV
Trouble (Marc Brown, 1997).There are picture books that break out of this didactic focus, but they seem to be the exceptions. Patrick's Dinosaurs on the Internet (Clarion, 1999) presents a group of dinosaurs as "big brother." They have traveled off into outer space, but Patrick finds in an Internet chat one night that the dinosaurs are still watching over him, appearing late at night on his computer screen. A House with No Mouse (Mousetime Media, 2003) addresses the problems of the digital divide directly by exploring the many houses that do not have computers and showing the alternatives that these people use to get online.
Naturally, Danny and his friends are found out, though they learn a great deal in the process as they determine what data to feed into the computer. Even though the computer in the book is an old, ENIAC-style mainframe, the book's final message could still be a great discussion starter in the classroom. In the book's last pages, after Danny's use of the computer has been discovered, Professor Bullfinch explains: No matter how intelligent the computer is, it is only a machine. It can solve problems in minutes that would take a man months to work out. But behind it there must be a human brain. It can never be a creator of music or of stories, or paintings, or ideas. It cannot even do our homework for us—we must do the homework. The machine can only help, as a textbook helps. It can only be a tool, as a typewriter is a tool. (120)  Though
the professor's message is another standard PSA-type lessons like those from
the picture
books, it takes the lesson to a higher level, moving beyond basic values
to asking readers to think about technology's abilities and limitations and
the accompanying ethics. (Of course, the more interesting question the book
raises may be why a college professor leaves children to watch his very expensive
computer in the first place.)Books for older children move beyond tapping technology to teach lessons to including the machines as a normal part of the setting. The Boggart (Aladdin, 1993) by Newbery Medal-winning author Susan Cooper draws on technology and an e-mail pen pal to solve the problem of a Scottish boggart that has been accidentally shipped to the Canada in a rolltop desk.  In Nancy
Drew #144, The E-mail Mystery (Aladdin, 1998), the young detective investigates
legal sabotage by tracing e-mail messages and log files. As was the case with
The Boggart, technology is simply part of the setting,
just like the other office equipment. In the course of her detective work, Nancy
visits cybercafes and learns about chatrooms. The technology in the book
is at times dated (e.g., there's a reference to BITNET), and can be inaccurate
from an advanced perspective. It's unlikely, however, that the book's readers
will realize where the author's knowledge of technology is lacking. The book
is clearly aimed at readers with very little computer knowledge. Details are
always defined and explained (though not always with full accuracy):
It's likely that the realistic details and the natural place of technology in these books has to do with the assumed experience and knowledge of the readers. Older readers are more likely to know enough about computers and other technologies so they can more readily adopt them as part of the natural landscape of the novel.  Recently
published young adult books (generally, books for teenagers) not only include
computer technologies as part of the setting, but they also include faux
computer-mediated messages and texts as part of the story. Many
young adult books blend technology tools
throughout the narrative. M.T.
Anderson's Feed (Candlewick, 2004), for instance, shows readers
a sci-fi vision where computers feed directly into the characters' heads,
feeding these characters just-in-time facts and information. The story includes
traditional narrative, which is interrupted with various informational and
persuasive messages from the Feed and personal messages from the protagonist's
friends. Another example, The Dating Game (Little, Brown, 2004) by Natalie Standiford, tells of three sophomores who design the Dating Game Web site for their Interpersonal Human Dynamics class—complete with quizzes, dating tips, and details on various social problems (think Cosmo Girl online). The story includes traditional narrative, e-mail messages, online quizzes, and Web pages.  What's
particularly interesting about the evolving connections between technology
and young adult novels, however, is their adoption of epistolary forms based
on new technologies. The most recent of these books, The Secret Blog of
Raisin Rodriguez (Razor
Bill, 2005) tells its story entirely through blog entries. The book opens
with an explanation of the purpose of Raisin's blog:
Raisin goes on to provide expository details—she's moved to Philadelphia, far away from her best friends; and her new stepsister keeps the phone tied up so she can't call her friends. Technology in The Secret Blog of Raisin Rodriguez isn't discussed explicitly. We never learn whether Raisin is using blogging software, but it seems likely since her friends are able to post comments. The secrecy of her blog is always foregrounded however. Her first entry ends with a warning to her two best friends, her readers: The book reads like a girl talking to her friends. The protagonist records in more detail than most teens are likely to in real blogs, but the story is believable and the technology is generally absent from the plot. It's not the technology that ultimately causes her problems but her own forgetfulness.I hope you enjoy my blog. Feel free to check for new updates as often as you like. Please do not feel free, under any circumstances, on pain of death, to give the address of this blog to anyone. This blog is very personal and confidential and deals with mature subject matter.  Click Here: To Find Out
How I Survived Seventh Grade (Little, Brown, 2005) explores a similar
plot—a secret Web site is meant to be a private diary, but things go
awry. While Raisin artfully weaves its tale without drawing attention
to the underlying technology, the computer tools that seventh grader Erin Swift
uses for her private blog are frequently (and sometimes unnecessarily) incorporated
in the plot. Because of the influence of her Web designer mother, Erin knows
a bit about creating Web pages, and her knowledge leads her to join an Intranet
club that will create the school's newsletter.The Web pages that Erin creates are neatly interspersed with first person narration of the events in her life. Like the plot in Raisin, the technology is not to blame for things that go wrong; personal mistakes are. Unfortunately, the book's use of technology metaphors is frequently laughable. Further, the book often refers to unfamiliar technical terms that are never explained. One chapter, for instance, is titled, "TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident)"; yet teen readers, having used Windows or Mac all their lives, would almost universally be unfamiliar with the terminology. It's a meaningless reference for readers.  Young adult novels cover a range of technology tools in addition to blogging,
and in each, the technology is simply a fact of the setting. Although many
of the books include details on netiquette and social warnings about online
safety, the following books all communicate their stories through a technology
tool:
 Everything starts with close reading. Whether we are exploring the vision of technology included in these texts ourselves or we are asking students to analyze the technology, the process begins with asking specific questions about how technology is presented in the book. To start, readers might consider such questions as the following:
 As the naming of the club demonstrates, the novel
deals with the much more serious issue of when the characters can name themselves. As the book begins, Russel, the protagonist hides who he is from his family, his friends, and other students. It is only online that Russel can identify himself, but even then he must hide his name:
The technology mentioned in this text is never described explicitly. It's a simple, generic chatroom, much like any other chatroom. What is significant is not the technology, but how it creates a social space for the characters. It is in this online space that they are first able to identify themselves to others. Even though the technology itself in Geography Club is fairly generic, then, its ability to create a social network is important to recognize. In texts that include details on more prominent technologies, closer reading is often an important way to discover underlying meanings in the text. The ReadWriteThink lesson plan Paying Attention to Technology: Exploring a Fictional Technology demonstrates one possible method for structuring such deeper readings. In this lesson plan, students complete a short survey to establish their beliefs about technology then compare their opinions to the ideas in a novel that depicts technology (such as 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, REM World, or Feed). Class discussion focuses on the overarching question “What is the author of this story saying about technology?” By exploring the fictional technology, students are urged to pay attention to the ways that technology is described and used.  Picture books and other texts with visual representations can also lead to interesting close readings. Questions such as the following can be the basis for deeper conversations:
Even without knowing the plot of the story, readers can learn much by simply looking at the cover of Arthur's Computer Disaster (click on the thumbnail to see a larger image). The computer featured on the cover is a generic PC with a color monitor. Readers with more technology experience may recognize that the machine is dated—more modern representations would probably show a flat-panel monitor, a CPU with a smaller footprint, and at the very least a two-button mouse (if not a three-button or scroll-wheel mouse). Young readers approaching this book, however, probably see only the computer. The relationship between Arthur, the pictured character, and the technology also reveals details about the book and the character's understanding of technology. Arthur's face and the book's title reveal that there is a problem, and the visual details of the technology contribute to this message. The colors on the screen and the highlight in its middle mimic the look of an explosion, but more importantly, Arthur doesn't seem to know how to use a mouse—the mouse is backwards, and the character is holding it up in the air (like a remote control) rather than sliding it along on the desktop. Readers can conclude from this image then that Arthur may not understand much about technology, and they can therefore predict that Arthur's misunderstandings lead to the disaster that the title warns them about. Role of Games For the purposes of this section, games refers to video and computer games. To limit the exploration to a reasonable area, I won't consider fan-fiction sorts of role-playing games (RPGs). The books I'm exploring have characters who may play games of some sort; however, the plot of the books is not following a character in a role-playing game. This section is limited to a few notes on books that include game references. I didn't conceptualize this section of the presentation until I was far away from my bookshelf.  Games come into play frequently in books for younger readers. In books such as Arthur's Computer Disaster (in Spanish as Arturo y el Desastre de la Computadora) and Franklin and the Computer, computer games are the seductive element that ultimately leads to conflict for the protagonist. For Arthur, the temptation to play the game Deep, Dark Sea leads to trouble when he and friend Buster play the game even though they were instructed not to touch the computer. In the process, they break the computer in the process. In Franklin and the Computer, protagonist Franklin becomes so obsessed with his friend Beaver's computer game Dam Builders that he forgets promises made to his real-world friends. In Susan Cooper's The Boggart, main character Jessup and friends are developing their own computer game over the course of the story. The group dresses as characters from the game for Halloween: Four of the five members of the Gang of Five were waiting for Emily at the Volniks' house, dressed as characters from their new computer game. This game, which was called Black Hole, was in a constant state of development; the Gang never seemed to finish it, because one or other of them was always having a new idea. It was all about spaceships which discovered numbers of different worlds while trying to avoid being dragged through black holes in space. Emily's vampire came from one of these worlds, adn so did the spider-like creature represented by Chris's costume, which had a round black body fitted over his head and most of his own body, and six extra legs the same size and shape as his own. (86)Other characters from the novel dress as the spaceship that game players travel in and as the hazards that game players encounter, Fire Burst and Ice Death. For these characters, the real world blends with the game design—and it is this blend between real and game worlds that solves the problem that the characters encounter.
Social Networks
Just some working notes. This section has the most interesting potential, given the number of books that now include faux messages ranging from e-mail messages to instant messages and blogging. To be developed eventually...  In many young adult books, text messages and e-mail messages replace the note passing of the past. Students without computer access may first experience the format of
instant messages and e-mail in these novels, and students' experiences with the
netiquette and social issues surrounding technology issues may stem
just as often from picture books and novels as it does from what they see
on television or at the movies. So much of the young adult audience's world focuses on cliques and social networks that
it's little surprise that books such as TTYL (Amulet, 2004) and p:¬)
ChaseR (Candlewick, 2002) have evolved.
In these books, we see the characters' social networks at work as we are invited to read their instant messages and e-mail messages.
Future Visions
This section will one day talk about sci-fi sorts of discussions of technology in children's and young adult literature. Books to consider in this section will include Feed and Be More Chill. |
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Danny
Dunn and the Homework Machine (Scholastic, 1958) is the first chapter book
including computers that I've found. The book targets readers aged 9–12,
children just beginning to read chapter books. The chapters are short, and the
book includes numerous illustrations by Caldecott winner Ezra Jack Keats. 
