On the evening of my Bologna Children’s Book Fair launch of Time Traveler Tours & Tales, I had the great fortune of being present for the 2014 Bologna Ragazzi Award celebration and prosecco toast. This was only the 3rd year for the digital category of the Ragazzi Award. To date, it is the closest thing the digital book world yet has to the Caldecott or Newberry.
It's a unique contest in that it's free to enter, there are no gimmicks, and both entrants as well as judging panel are international. What's more, the judges are particularly interested in discovering unknown talent.
The annual Digital Ragazzi Award shortlist has become my go-to source for all things cutting-edge in story-based interactive media for kids. As soon as the lucky 20 shortlisted titles are announced, I run straight to the appropriate distribution channel – the app store, iBookstore, etc. – to download the winners, mentions, and finalists in both fiction and non-fiction categories.
I play with them. I study them. I try to glean everything I can from these standard bearers in the digital publishing space. I pluck from them every trick, tidbit, and tantalizing technique that might inform the look and feel of the future Time Traveler Tours & Tales media library.
I most appreciate the cross-cultural perspective the Digital Ragazzi Award collection provides. This year’s candidates included 258 products from 37 countries. As the judging panel is also multicultural, it is particularly interesting to discover what resonates within such international diversity.
But, lucky me!, this year I didn’t have to guess how the winning titles made it through the judges’ screening process to rise above the rest. Because on the eve of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, I joined an intensive master class sponsored by the Dust or Magic community and facilitated by Bologna Digital Ragazzi Award judge Warren Buckleitner (USA), supported by Klaas Verplanke (Belgium) and Cristina Mussinelli (Italy). Only Chris Meade (UK) appeared to be missing.
Master class participants and speakers comprised Ragazzi Award finalists, including Touch Press, represented by John Cromie, and Nosy Crow's Kate Wilson. Together along with the judges and honorees, we studied what constitutes best practice (Magic) and worst (Dust) in today’s interactive media for kids.
First, the winners. This year’s top prizes went to the following six titles:
Nonfiction
Pierre et le loup, Camera Lucida, Paris, France
ABC Actions, Peapod Labs, LLC, Chicago, USA
Double Double, And Then Story Designers, USA/Venezuela
Fiction
Love, The App, Niño Studio, Caba, Argentina
Midnight Feast, Slap Happy Larry, Murrumbateman, Australia
Jack and the Beanstalk, Nosy Crow, London, UK
What made the judges' feel they were in the presence of Magic?
The judges placed heavy importance on interactive innovations. These did not have to be numerous or even necessarily advanced (see Double Double). But they did need to suit the age and developmental stage of the target audience. They also needed to be seamlessly integrated within the narrative and visual content. In short, they needed to make sophisticated tech look easy by not being noticeable at all.
With the exception of Shaun Tan's, Rules of Summer, the judges tended to prefer works developed specifically for the digital environment, as opposed to digitized duplicates of print publications. Despite cultural differences between the judges as well as personal preferences for illustration versus narration, all four judges agreed without reservation on this singular point:
Digital media offer new ways for children and youth to access and experience content, and learn from it. Digital formats demand, therefore, that developers go beyond the limits of print and explore with their new media publications the boundaries that come with each and every format.
Other features that caused magical titles to shine through the crowd were:
Innovation, products that did something new or did something new with older tech
A new story, so many ideas are recycled
Quality in all product elements, from illustration to narration to audio to technical craftsmanship
Multi-touch technology used naturally to tell a story
Seamless integration of tech and storytelling assets
Responsive to touch
Intuitive to use
Scaffolds learning for the user
What broke apart and crumbled to Dust in the judges' hands?
In addition to mere digitized print content, other things that constituted Dust for the judges were:
Buggy products that crashed or took too long to load
Clumsy or obviously templated design
Art that doesn’t do anything
Good illustration with bad narrative, or vice versa, good narrative with bad illustration
Clunky mechanics, ex. pages turn accidentally, interactive elements in for sport, slow to load, not responsive to touch
Stuff already seen before, lacking any new innovation or surprising uses of older innovation
“Jabby” products, i.e., sprinkled with hotspots that don’t serve the content
“Flippy” products, i.e., when page advancement mimics a print book
“Evil” products: i.e., cash traps or peppered with links to web content
Wordy, especially egregious in products for non- or emerging readers
Background music that loops over and over and can’t be controlled by user
Content containing ethnic stereotypes
Endings that makes no sense
No credits – left the judges asking, who made this?
The Dust or Magic masterclass, called Generation Remix, concluded with facilitators restating that quality in all areas is paramount. This validated my mantra that storyapp craft is a team effort. It requires the combined efforts of storytellers, visual designers, interactive user design gurus, and dynamic coders, and let's not forget savvy marketing professionals, to make magical Interactive media for kids.
“You can’t make a good salad with bad lettuce. Exceptional quality never goes out of style.”
