Radical change theory and synergistic reading for digital age youth

Journal of Aesthetic Education

Volumn 43, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 92-107

  Dresang, Eliza T ^a   Kotrla, Bowie ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON   (United States)

^b FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 65849206653     PISSN: 00218510     EISSN: 15437809     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jae.0.0037     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. Roderick McGillis, The Nimble Reader: Literary Theory and Children's Literature (New York: Twayne, 1996).
2. Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret (New York: Scholastic Press, 2007).
3. See "Transcript from an Interview with Brian Selznick," http://wrwrwr.adlit.org/transcript-display/19677.
4. Another theoretical explanation for some of the changes identified by Radical Change and applied to books for youth is postmodernism. For a discussion of the similarities and differences between the two, see Eliza T. Dresang, "Radical Change Theory, Postmodernism, and Contemporary Picturebooks," in Postmodern Picturebooks: Play, Parody, and Self-Referentiality, ed. Lawrence R. Sipe and Sylvia Pantaleo (New York: Routledge, 2008), 41-54. Radical Change Theory would, for example, be used to explain Hugo Cabret because of its graphic and interactive characteristics, but postmodernism would not because of its lack of metafictive devices.
5. Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (New York: Knopf, 1995);
6. Don Tapscott, Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997);
7. David Buckingham, Beyond Technology: Children's Learning in the Age of Digital Culture (Maiden, MA: Polity Press, 2007).
8. Eliza T. Dresang, Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1999).
9. For aesthetics of rhizomorphic reading supported by the theory of Deluze and Guitarri and related to Radical Change, see Kathleen Burnett and Eliza T. Dresang, "Rhizomorphic Reading: The Emergence of a New Aesthetic in Literature for Youth," Library Quarterly 69, no. 4 (1999): 421-46.
10. Katerina Clarkand and Michael Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1984), 278.
11. Michael Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World (New York: Routledge, 1990), 113.
12. As an example, see Eliza T. Dresang, "Radical Qualities of The Tale of Peter Rabbit," in Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit: A Children's Classic at 100, ed. Margaret Mackey (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press for the International Children's Literature Association, 2002), 99-116.
13. For more on McLuhan's ideas, see Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964).
14. See Dresang, Radical Change, 28-30. In comparing contemporary children's literature to that of adults, Nikolajeva also concludes that "children's literature today is evolving towards complexity and sophistication on all narrative levels."
15. Maria Nikolajeva, Children's Literature Comes of Age: Toward a New Aesthetic, Children's Literature and Culture Series, ed. Jack Zipes (New York: Garland, 1996).
16. Louise Rosenblatt, "The Aesthetic Transaction," Journal of Aesthetic Education 20, no. 4 (1986): 124.
17. Louise Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration (1938; reprint, New York: Modern Language Association, 1983).
18. Rosenblatt, "The Aesthetic Transaction," 123.
19. David Macaulay, Black and White (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990).
20. George P. Landow, Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization, 3rd ed. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).
21. Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread (New York: Candlewick, 2003).
22. See Eliza T. Dresang, "From Tom Jones to The Tale of Despereaux: The Insertion of Authorial 'Asides' in Text" (paper presented at Sixth Biennial Conference on Modern Critical Approaches to Children's Literature, Nashville, TN, April 1, 2005).
23. Mo Willems, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus (New York: Hyperion, 2003).
24. As a literary theory Radical Change identifies the types of intense interactivity that are facilitated in the digital age, be they cognitive, emotional, or physical, and the forms and formats that promote and encourage those interactions in books. Theories from other fields lend different insights into specific human/object transactions. For example, applying pediatrician/psychoanalyst Winnicott's ideas to literature and to young children lend insight into the psychological roots of what Radical Change identifies. See Peter Rudnytsky, ed., Transitional Objects and Potential Spaces: Literary Uses of D. W. Winnicott (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
25. Perry Nodelman, Words about Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children's Picture Books (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988).
26. David Macaulay, "1991 Caldecott Acceptance Speech," Journal of Youth Services in Libraries 4, no. 4 (1991): 346.
27. Jon Sciezka and Lane Smith, The Stinky Cheeseman and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (New York: Viking, 1992).
28. To understand the importance of design in digital age books, see Jon Sciezka (author), design by Molly Leach (the designer of The Stinky Cheeseman) "Design Matters," Horn Book Magazine (March/April 1998), http://www.hbook.com/magazine/articles/1998/mar98-Scieszka-leach.asp.
29. Karen Hesse, Out of the Dust (New York: Scholastic Press, 1997).
30. See the mouse's tail at http://bootless.net/mouse.html.
31. Macaulay, "1991 Caldecott Acceptance Speech," 346.
32. Karyn M. Peterson, "Celebrating a Classic," Playthings, April 1, 2007, http://wrwrwr.playthings.com/article/CA6431998.html.
33. For commentary on Goodnight Moon, see Leonard Marcus, introduction to Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown (New York: HarperCollins, 1997);
34. Ellen Handler Spitz, Inside Picture Books (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 27-37
35. John Cleverly and D. C. Phillips, Visions of Childhood: Influential Models from Locke to Spock, rev. ed. (New York: Teachers College Press, 1986).
36. Jacqueline S. Rose, "The Case of Peter Pan: The Impossibility of Children's Fiction," in The Children's Culture Reader, ed. Henry Jenkins (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 58.
37. Cleverly and Phillips, Visions of Childhood.
38. Marina Warner, Six Myths of Our Time (New York: Vintage, 1994).
39. Warner, Six Myths of Our Time
40. Jenkins, The Children's Culture Reader
41. Tapscott, Growing lip Digital
42. Buckingham, Beyond Technology
43. See the Pew Internet and American Life Project research reports, http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/c/6/topics.asp, and the Kaiser Family Foundation research reports, http://wrwrvv.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia121206pkg.cfm.
44. Ulla G. Foehr, "Media Multitasking Among American Youth: Prevalence, Predictors and Pairings" (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2006), 7; available online at http://wrwrw.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia121206pkg.cfm.
45. Marc Prensky, "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II: Do They Really Think Differently?" On the Horizon 9, no. 6 (2001): 2.
46. Nicholas Carr, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Atlantic Monthly (July/August 2008), http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google (accessed July 29, 2008).
47. Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).
48. MacArthur Foundation, Digital Media and learning, http://digitallearning. macfound.org/site/c.enJLKQNlFiG/b.2029199/k.BFC9/Home. htm.
49. Sylvia Pantaleo, "Young Children and Radical Change Characteristics in Picture Books," The Reading Teacher 58, no. 2 (2004): 185
50. This study focuses on David Wiesner, The Three Pigs (New York: Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin, 2001).
51. For a study with older children, see Sylvia Pantaleo, "Writing Texts with Radical Change Characteristics," Literacy 41, no. 4 (2007): 16-25.
52. David Wiesner, Flotsam (New York: Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin, 2006).
53. Mark A. Pike, "From Personal to Social Transaction: A Model of Aesthetic Reading in the Classroom," Journal of Aesthetic Education 37, no. 2 (2003): 71
54. Pantaleo, "Young Children"
55. Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2007).
56. Wayne Wiegand, "The Rich Potential of American Public School Library History," Libraries and the Cultural Record 42, no. 1 (2007): 57-74.
57. For example, see "Teens Talk. Books," http://wwwr.genrefluent. com/teentalklitm.
58. Spitz, Inside Picture Books.
59. Ellen Handler Spitz, "Aesthetics for Children: Some Psychological Reflections," Journal of Aesthetic Education 28, no. 3 (1994): 64.