Sunday October 14, 2012
Kid-centric Frankfurt Book Fair
Publishers trying to engage children are adding interactive elements to print books; the Wonderbook , for instance, links up to a Playstation . THE Frankfurt Book Fair is spotlighting child and youth literature and its role at the avant-garde of the publishing world with playful apps for smartphones and tablet computers as well as interactive games.
The media world for children and youngsters breaks new ground for publishers in the digital age by pushing the boundaries far beyond the printed book, say organisers of the world’s biggest book fair, which opened in Frankfurt, Germany, on Wednesday. The event ends today.
Electronics giant Sony and Nintendo, the titan in electronic games, were slated to be among about 7,400 exhibitors at the five-day fair, reflecting innovations in an industry where “content is king”, the fair’s director said.
the Wonderbook “Children’s and youth media are a prototype for what is happening in the publishing industry but also for what is happening at the moment socially,” Juergen Boos told reporters.
Sony will showcase its new Wonderbook device, which under the guise of a classic book links up to a PlayStation console to display 3D images on screen for its young user.
As well as homing in on which trends may evolve into universal standards, industry movers and shakers will ponder whether new technology limits the imagination, or encourages it to expand.
“In order to keep up with the changing reading and learning habits of future generations, we need to constantly create new formats and develop and expand popular topics and trends,” Boos said.
He said around 1,500 publishers who deal exclusively with the children and youth market were due to attend the Frankfurt fair, describing the sector as a growth area.
The fair not only acts as a kind of “scout” and “navigation system” but is also a forum for bringing together different multimedia representatives to get a project off the ground, Katja Boehne, the fair’s spokeswoman, said.
“When someone has a children’s book, they look for musicians, they look for technology companies, they also look for computer games experts – and then together, a children’s book is initiated,” she said.
Dealing with the development of offshoot products from a book has become a trend at the Frankfurt event, she added.
Technological innovation however is not the only way in which children’s literature has changed, with content moving away from being either “moral” in style or purely entertaining. “Demanding children’s and youth literature, which we now have, has basically also become more entertaining,” Boos said highlighting a children’s book about a dysfunctional family by New Zealand writer Kate De Goldi.
Education is another major theme at this year’s fair which displayed a “classroom of the future” offering an insight into how tomorrow’s students will learn with interactive or digitised aids.
With several debt-wracked eurozone countries feeling the pinch, Boehne said they had been pleasantly surprised that attendance figures had remained steady and saw it as a “symptom of the crisis” that exhibitors felt the need to keep in touch with business partners. – AFP Relaxnews
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