The undead children's book and the persistent 'bedtime' story
| dc.contributor.author | Nichols, S. | |
| dc.contributor.editor | Nichols, S. | |
| dc.date.issued | 2022 | |
| dc.description.abstract | The continued popularity of children’s books and of the practice of shared reading in domestic settings are used as a provocation for thinking about old and new literacies. The analysis begins with an exploration of childhood memories of parents, speaking to us from the early 1990s. Many were implementing shared reading with their young children, having never experienced the practice in their own childhood. Their stories highlight the disruptive power of novel literacy practices now considered familiar and unexceptional. The broadcasting of children’s stories on television is discussed as an innovation that preceded, rather than followed, the normalisation of bedtime story reading in the home. Online story reading in the current circumstances of the pandemic which has confined children and parents to their homes is then explored through an analysis of stories and accounts of this practice. Based on this analysis, I argue that the ‘bedtime story’ assemblage has all the qualities of the ‘mobile’ in actor-network theory: mobility, durability, and transformability (Latour, 1987). Broadcast technologies, including reading aloud itself, have long been utilised to bring children’s stories into sites dispersed in time and space. Innovation in this space appears as a continuous transformative process rather than the materialisation of grand progress narrative where the new supplants the old. | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Source details - Title: Traversing old and new literacies: the undead book and other assemblages, 2022 / Nichols, S. (ed./s), Ch.4, pp.43-55 | |
| dc.identifier.doi | 10.1007/978-981-19-7974-3_4 | |
| dc.identifier.isbn | 9789811979736 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/11541.2/32276 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. | |
| dc.publisher.place | Gateway East, Singapore : | |
| dc.rights | Copyright 2022 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. | |
| dc.source.uri | https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7974-3_4 | |
| dc.subject | children’s books | |
| dc.subject | bedtime story | |
| dc.title | The undead children's book and the persistent 'bedtime' story | |
| dc.type | Book chapter | |
| pubs.publication-status | Published | |
| ror.mmsid | 9916708822501831 |