Journal launch and presentation: Analyzing the Interactivity of Baby Books

Jacqueline Reid-Walsh

This last week I was pleased to participate in a launch and a presentation about a new co-authored article, “Understanding the Design Values of Baby Books: Materiality, Co-presence, and Remediation” just published in the latest issue of Children’s Literature in Education with Rebecca Rouse from the University of Skövde, Sweden. It is a special issue devoted to Baby books edited by Clémentine Beauvais at the University of York, England. I took part in the virtual launch organized by the journal with the entire group of authors.

Yesterday Rebecca and I participated in a special event hosted by the Pop-App International Centre on Interactive Books in their beautiful museum called MUSLI (school and children’s book museum). We spoke about four exemplary books and book series: I talked about Dean’s Rag Books from the early 20th century and the Indestructibles from the early 21st century that are of simple design, while Rebecca talked about Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kundardt (1940) and I PreLibri by Bruno Munari (1980) which are of complex design. We argued that the latter books in each pair are “remediations” (Bolter and Grusin, 1999) that are “refashionings” or “reworkings” of the genre and ideas of the early books for later audiences of babies and caretakers. As a response, Pompeo Vagliani delivered a paper about the history of rag books published by Cartoccino from the 1920s to the 1940’s in Italy which are little known outside of the country. It was marvellous to all be together in person! Rebecca and I spoke in English and Pompeo in Italian. Flo Ulmann kindly translated for us. There was a good audience turnout and we had animated discussions in a mix of both languages.