Format: Paper

My paper will look back on the history of children’s audiobooks and consider its previous formats to determine what the future of children’s audiobooks will include. I will begin with the benefits of children’s audiobooks and then discuss its evolution over time. Edison’s recording of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ on a wax cylinder could be considered the first step towards children’s audiobooks, followed by The Bubble Book series of the early 20th century on records. The audiobook kept up with the times, moving towards cassette tape and is now offered in a digital format available on mobile devices. I will touch on each of these new versions of the audiobook, including what features made it different from the previous version and from adult audiobooks. For example, when sounds and music were introduced to books on vinyl records by Disney and the addition of a friend/caregiver in the case of Teddy Ruxpin. Along with the history of children’s audiobooks, I will offer my thoughts on the present version of audiobooks including works that include digital copies of the text. 

I conclude with the argument that children’s audiobooks will continue to gain popularity since we rely heavily on our mobile devices and because of COVID-19. More children were introduced to audiobooks during the pandemic [UK’s National Literacy Trust Report] and retailers like Audible made hundreds of audiobooks (for all ages) free to the public in March. Libraries also had to limit the number of loans in order to meet their patrons’ requests for materials. I think that publishers took note of this trend and will produce more audiobooks. But what new features will they include in production, or will they return to previous versions? In 2017 a new version of Teddy Ruxpin was released, with LED eyes and stories available through an app instead of a cassette tape. Is this the future of children’s audiobooks?

Sources: 

Best, E., Clark, C. and Picton, I. (2020). Children, young people and audiobooks before and during lockdown. London: National Literacy Trust.

Burkey, Mary. Audiobooks for Youth: a Practical Guide to Sound Literature. 1st ed. Chicago: American Library Association, 2013. Print.

Cahill, Moore. “A Sound History: Audiobooks Are Music to Children’s Ears.” Children & libraries 15.1 (2017): 22–. Web.

Carey, Bridget. “The life, death and resurrection of Teddy Ruxpin.” c|net .September 21, 2017. https://www.cnet.com/features/teddy-ruxpin-history-disney-atari-2017-return/

Larson, Lotta C. “E-Books and Audiobooks.” The Reading Teacher., vol. 69, no. 2, International Reading Association,, pp. 169–77, doi:info:doi/.

Rubery, Matthew. The Untold Story of the Talking Book. Cambridge, Massachusetts ;: Harvard University Press, 2017. Print.

**I reached out to NYPL, Brooklyn and Queens Public Libraries for loan statistics, annual reports or just to talk to someone. Will reach out to Amazon/Audible to see if any data on their end is available.

Inspired by the Murder Mystery Puzzle: Cain’s Jawbone

Cain’s Jawbone, written in 1934 and republished in 2019 is a murder mystery written in prose and spaced out between 100 unorganized pages which the reader/gamer would have to structure correctly to identify the killer. It was recently solved for the third time in its 100 years of history. 

Also inspired by the “computer novel” Portal I thought about how the physical media of fiction can be “interactive”. Cain’s Jawbone strikes me as closer to a puzzle than a book like House of Leaves because the pages are unbound, and the reader/gamer is given control over how they approach the solution or win-state. House of Leaves might leave the reader flipping back though pages, but this is similar to the method of elucidation that one might encounter in traditional novels when returning to a passage that clarifies something, nore is there an actual puzzle to solve. My project is not an “interactive drama” which games like Façade and The Sims are. My project also differs from Cain’s Jawbone in that identifying the formal elements of are important, much like a jigsaw puzzle. In Cain’s Jawbone laying out the narrative events correctly in relation to each other is the puzzle.It will be accompanied by a 3-4 page essay trying to sort out the theory behind it, using resources from class assignments. 

This quote from Wardrip-Fruin’s article gives me a proper starting point when offering up a piece of fiction with a “correct” way to play/read:

‘ “The payoff for “correct” play [is] usually to win; to play “incorrectly” is to lose. This is very much at odds with what one might loosely call goals of fiction: exploration, insight, and the renewal of the perceived world through alterneity. (Infocom 9)” ‘

There are individual elements that I would have to do more reading on in order to not use the terms loosely as I have done here: reader/user/gamer/ deserve more clarity.

Project:

14 Poems in heroic couplets to be printed out, based on 14 locations from the Map: The Skeld. In order to solve the puzzle, locations would have to be identified and physically placed near (diagonally, above, next, etc…) to each other. There are formal qualities of the poems which when correctly arranged reveal who the Imposter is.

There are clues in the text which give away the location. Here is one which should be identified as Arsenal.

Location ____________

I pounced upon my task with clanging gears,
The swinging disk spun between blurry tears.
Poor Blue was found in Admin all severed,
And I, not far, was to duty tethered.
A sound from below made me pause mid tweak,
It was perhaps a mouse who frantic, squeaked.
A gun stood out on a rack nearby when
I thought how soon we were reduced from ten.
To calm my nerves, a thought: don’t raise a fuss
But In my heart I felt that Red was suss.

I am offering up poems meant to be read out of order, but have an intended order if one wanted to solve a puzzle; and this puzzle is not narrative, but formal, much like a jigsaw puzzle. Why the use of Among Us as a narrative device? It gives a background, rationale, and scenery to the narrative. I suppose any old murder mystery setting (Clue, Knives Out) would work as well. Why heroic couplets? It works as a brief burst of text much like the rounds of the game.

In our group project, we looked at the reception of Jean Toomer’s Cane in the 20s when it was first published, and then in the 70s, after it was republished. As may be expected, the difference in reception is significant – most particularly having there been the Civil Rights Movement in between. As per our team work share, I looked at its reception after its second publication, and was able to find many academic articles, a special issue of the CLA on Cane, and other reviews.

Once I read this material, I gained a much better understanding of the book regarding its structure and themes, after which I picked articles and sections in the book that reflected several aspects of/themes in the book – its circular structure, the women and the aggregate man (as relates to the African American experience/identity), its connection to blues and the Bible, and the author’s identity, all of which seemed to be elaborately analyzed in the articles: 

• The title “Cane” and several sections in the book have Biblical references (Cane/Cain) reflecting its mythical aspects, 
• “Oracular” points to its connection to the blues; 
• “Karintha” involves themes on men (an aggregate man is present in the book, as suggested by Fischer, 1971) and women (“the threads which weave Cane together”, and who may, like the aggregate man, be “all the same woman”  as suggested by Chase, 1971, p. 259) that are further developed in the novel. Here is also where the “images of celebration” (Grant, 1971, pp. 33-34) are introduced, and the circular structure of the novel begins geographically as it starts in Georgia later on moving up north; 
• “Song of the Son”, which is at the center of the book, is a poem about black identity; 
• “Kabnis”, a portrait of the artist, his position/experience as a black man, continuing its theme as blues, and finally, adding to the circular theme of the book since this last section is in Georgia as was the first. 

While there is certainly more to the book, I enjoyed this combination of articles that -at least in my head- reflected the beauty and power of the piece as a blues song humming a myth/reality.

References:

– Blake, S. (1974). THE SPECTATORIAL ARTIST AND THE STRUCTURE OF “CANE”. CLA Journal, 17(4), 516-534. Retrieved November 3, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44329086

– Chase, P. (1971). THE WOMEN IN “CANE”. CLA Journal, 14(3), 259-273. Retrieved November 3, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44328357

– Fischer, W. (1971). THE AGGREGATE MAN IN JEAN TOOMER’S “CANE”. Studies in the Novel, 3(2), 190-215. Retrieved November 3, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/29531458

– Goede, W. (1969). Jean Toomer’s Ralph Kabnis: Portrait of the Negro Artist as a Young Man. Phylon (1960-), 30(1), 73-85. doi:10.2307/273361

– Grant, M. (1971). Images of Celebration in Cane. Negro American Literature Forum, 5(1), 32-36. doi:10.2307/3041141

– Lieber, T. (1969). DESIGN AND MOVEMENT IN “CANE”. CLA Journal, 13(1), 35-50. Retrieved November 3, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44328732

– McKeever, B. F. (1970). Cane as Blues. Negro American Literature Forum, 4(2), 61. https://doi.org/10.2307/3041353

– Scruggs, C. W. (1972). The Mark of Cain and the Redemption of Art: A Study in Theme and Structure of Jean Toomer’s Cane. American Literature, 44(2), 276. https://doi.org/10.2307/2924510

Annotating Jean Toomer’s modernist 1923 novel Cane was a lot of fun—it is a sentence I decided to start with after coming up with dozens of others and deleting them all in the end. The second thing I want to share is that the process of annotating, as many other analyses of literary writing, is a work of art. Toomer’s Cane was a great eye-opening novel for me—it’s been a while since I was so interested in a modernist text from that period. It contained everything I liked in terms of form and style (as an active proponent of Russian formalists, I can’t leave aside the text’s form). 

Our team selected chapters from the novel we all wanted to work on. Before annotating the very novel, I decided it might be a good idea to offer a bibliographical list of journals that published earlier parts and poems of the novel. I, too, compiled a somewhat condensed list of critical reception that appeared in 1923-1925, right after the novel’s publication. Later, I was able to find an issue of the journal The Liberator available online and compare the chapter “Becky” from the journal with the one published in the novel. 

On the one hand, one would say there weren’t that many significant differences—if you don’t count those twenty-some changed that took place—the majority of these changes were concerned punctuation marks and spelling. Although this may, quite reasonably, seem to be insignificant changes, on the other hand, such changes might tell us more than we initially expect. For instance, this is a great starting point for someone interested in how the editorial institute worked in the past—how the language stylists worked at both publishing houses and the editorial offices of literary journals. Whose idea was to implement those changes? Did it come from the press or the journal’s editor? Or, in the end, was this Toomer himself who decided to make those changes in the text in a matter of a year. To figure out who was the one how made those changes, one would need to set out for a search in the archives—the starting point will be archivegrid.com, where one can find out where the Jean Toomer papers are held and if there are any archival collections related to the press and/or the journal. Also, this is quite a telling example that suggests us that a diligent editor of, for example, scholarly edition of Toomer’s Cane should pay special attention to the versions that appear in many journals and study to, among other things, how Toomer’s text changed, developed and came to life. 

If preparing a digital scholarly publication of Toomer’s Cane, the digital tools would be of enormous help to mark and showcase these (and others) significant changes in the novel. Coming up with some user-friendly code that could demonstrate, by clicking just one time, the differences between the journal publication and the novel. (In this respect, I really like the way Lyn Hejinian’s book My Way was edited by Daniel Carter for the Scholarly Editing.)

Our group decided to annotate Cane by focusing on pop culture references during that time period as well as some contemporary references. Our choices for annotation platform were Hypothes.is or Manifold, and since we wanted to include media, our first instinct was to use Manifold. While Lisa was researching Manifold, I wanted to collect some resources for my group on music and art created during that decade. I wanted to focus specifically on African American artists of the Harlem Renaissance, since Toomer was an important figure in this movement. I had a very brief introduction to the Harlem Renaissance and knew of some artists like Aaron Douglas, but wanted to expand my knowledge. I found two articles through the GC Library by Barlow and Francis that were helpful to my group. Barlow’s Literary Ethnomusicology and the Soundscape of Jean Toomer’s Cane explores the musical roots in Cane and Francis’ Painting the South with a Northern Eye provides a background of many northern artists who went back “home” to the South to find inspiration and paint everyday life of African Americans. I found several works by Aaron Douglas and was successful in inserting them into Hypothes.is in case we decided to drop Manifold. 

The team moved away from Manifold due to our time limits as well as the difficulty in inserting media. Lisa uploaded Cane to Manifold and while it looked clean and professional, it would have taken too much time to rework our contributions into an accepted format and we would not be able to edit directly on Manfiold. After we decided on Hypothes.is, we discussed using a cleaner version of Cane. I had some experience creating a site on the Academic Commons, so I created one for the group and uploaded Cane to a new page. I shared the link with the group and we began our annotations, each choosing what part spoke to us. 

Re-reading Cane after looking through art and media reinforced the importance of music and spirituals in the text. In our class annotations, I focused more on the text and imagery and what I knew of the South during the early twentieth century. A Portrait in Georgia still stands out to me. I remember commenting on how lyrical some of the text was, but I didn’t realize how much until my group began annotating. I added a few random annotations to other group member’s work, including Becky, but most of the annotations were in Cotton Song and Box Seat. I really wanted to connect the lyrical part of the text to art and actual spirituals. Aaron Douglas was an inspiration for our group, but his pieces from James Weldon Johnson’s work (most notably Judgement Day) had to be included in Cane. The Art Deco style and his reimagining of spirituals align with Toomer’s writing. I also couldn’t help but include Paul Robeson’s rendition of Go Down Moses (let My People Go). I get chills every time I hear it, and encourage others to listen and learn more about Robeson. 

Overall I enjoyed my introduction to Cane and Hypothes.is. Hypothes.is was very easy to learn and use, especially considering our time constraints and that we are remote learning. It was very easy to embed an image, video, or link and I like the addition of Public Note. That is a great way to share recommended readings and other information to your private group or the public.

[I apologize, I thought I posted this last week.]

Thinking back on my early years in Catholic school, a few things have stuck with me. I remember how itchy the uniform was as well as some of the bizarre rules we had to follow. One of the rules was that each fall, we had to write our name in our textbook under “Owner” and then look through the books we received and check the covers and title page for any markings made by the children who had it the year before. We had to continue this practice during the year, letting the teacher know of any random scribbles and underlining, or risk demerits. Fast forward to my work in archives, where myself and researchers become almost giddy when finding annotations in books, but only “serious” annotations. Reading Lerer’s article Devotion and Defacement: Reading Children’s Marginalia reminded me of my textbooks and left me self reflecting as a librarian on how I view children’s marginalia and its future. 

I agree with Lerer that many in my profession value the “pristine copy” (p. 128) of a book and will devalue a book filled with scribble or damaged in another way. He argues that librarianship of the late 19th and early 20th centuries “decried the child who messed with books, whether they were on loan or bought” (p. 128) and suppressed children’s imaginations while detaching the book as a personal object. Lerer supports these arguments with numerous examples, including the exhibition Marginalia and Other Crimes, the librarian in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and the (in)famous Anne Carroll Moore of NYPL. For those who don’t know about children’s librarian Anne Carroll Moore, she was extremely influential at NYPL. For instance, she did not like the book Goodnight Moon so it wasn’t part of the library’s holdings until 1972, almost 30 years after its release. 

As a librarian, I do not condone anyone defacing library books because they do belong to the library and we are borrowing the library’s property. I do support the more recent library programs that center activities around books as a way to connect to the book and its lessons without damaging it. But I had to circle back the “Owner” label in my textbooks. If I am listed as the owner, why can’t I underline, circle, or even write in my book? This could explain why I was so hesitant towards annotation until college, even when I owned the book.

Lerer placed heavy emphasis on what the book is for a child and by marking or annotating it, the child is sharing their private thoughts while changing the book forever. Their marginalia is a mix of “devotion and defacement” (p 146), and a place of magic. Quite literally in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

I do think that children’s marginalia is not something that should be written off or discouraged (unless it is in a library copy), but I am curious as to how children of this digital age will continue marking up their books. During this pandemic, I know that many parents borrowed/purchased digital books for their children and themselves. Print books are not disappearing anytime soon, but how will scholars in the future study children’s marginalia if more people are buying digital resources for their children?

I went into this project with a large amount of what I suppose I’d call animosity. Ever since grade school, I’ve encountered a number of teachers who tried to make annotation stick with every student who entered their classrooms, and apparently I was lucky – many people I’ve met have mentioned that they would be given graded annotation assignments, where they would be graded on the quality of their annotation as early as 6th grade. Even without accounting for how inflexible I was at that age, I don’t know if I would have been able to complete such an assignment due to a few other problems. When I take notes on a piece, I take them in the traditional, if not sometimes unorthodox manner of recording key information on an external surface, rather than upon the piece itself. I’ve heard people claim that reading back through a text you’ve annotated is “even better the second time,” but whenever I’d look through a hand-annotated book in school, I’d just get distracted by the smudged handwriting in the margins, or the Post-It bits sticking out from pages. Additionally, when I handwrite, I must choose between it being legible, or it being complete within a reasonable amount of time, and furthermore, at least to me, it’s much more expedient, organized, and less reliant on Post-Its to write one’s thoughts outside the book along with an associated page number. Then you could even use that sheet of paper as a bookmark for the very book.

I’m contributing that last paragraph because working with hypothes.is, with all of what I wrote in mind, a tremendous game changer for someone like me. I’m much faster at typing than I am at writing by hand, I don’t have to worry about permanently defacing the text or wasting paper, and depending on the text, I might even prefer to read it on-screen. I’ll say this before going forward: while I’m still not a particularly large fan of annotation in the first place as a form of note taking, using hypothes.is to annotate a text for a supposed audience – such as anyone looking at the Office Gingers’ final product – feels far, far better than painstakingly scribbling in the margins of books for no reason but to appease a short-tempered teacher.

Regarding the project itself and the way it unfolded, we originally were going to use CUNY’s own Manifold for our annotation of Jean Toomer’s Cane. However, we found quickly that for the time allotted and the nature of the project, it just wasn’t too great a fit. It was a multi-day ordeal to even get everyone properly situated as members of the Manifold project, and Manifold’s method of adding media didn’t fit too well with what we were trying to do. For a longer-term, more formal project, I think the group was in agreement that Manifold could be great to revisit. Thus, we turned our sights towards the likes of WordPress and hypothes.is, as well as simple email for communication.

On the subject of adding media, perhaps my favorite part of hypothes.is is the fact that its media embedding functionality is straightforward, yet robust and flexible. In fact, my only complaint is that one is unable to upload content directly from one’s computer, but the only way this impacted the project was when I was still getting my bearings, and I saved a few images I wanted to include in the annotation to my drive (I quickly realized my mistake). Hypothes.is also lent itself well to improving communication; a group member could mark a passage to call “dibs” on it, and then they could come back later and elaborate on the significance of that passage, or add images, or so one and so forth.

Most of my own contributions were pieces by Aaron Douglas, an artist who’s popped up a few times throughout my educational career and who I thus have some familiarity with. My process was to go through the piece, cross-reference pieces of text with the titles and content of Douglas’ work, and in the case of a particularly noteworthy connection, I would add in the appropriate painting. It wasn’t too hard to find his art online, so I didn’t have to spend too much time searching, leaving me more time to contemplate what I should put where. Admittedly, my criteria were a bit restrictive and I probably could have contributed more if I was more flexible with where I added the images in. Furthermore, I didn’t want to put the same image more than once, but there was definitely cases where one image could fit multiple parts of the text.

We were originally going to stay very close to the original prompt and use only content from around or before the time of writing of Cane. However, I think the general consensus in this regard was that it was needlessly restrictive and shut out some sorts of relevant and genuinely interesting associations and analysis. Douglas isn’t too far after Toomer chronologically, but a lot of his work came well over a decade after Cane. At first, I worried about the exact year of the Douglas pieces I used, which in turn caused me to worry about the size of my library of usable work, but after this change, it greatly expanded what content I could use.

In all honesty, while this project wasn’t my cup of tea, it could have been far, far worse. I’m sitting here wondering how it would have gone if, for instance, we were made to purchase physical copies of the text, physically annotate them, then photograph our annotations and send them over the web to one another for further processing. My best guess is that it wouldn’t have gone well at all. In any case though, I think the project went just fine, and while I might not use it for note taking, hypothes.is is a useful enough tool that I might use it for another project someday.