Dr. Naomi Hamer's "Enter Through The Gift Shop: Transmedia Storytelling and the Picture Book from Mobile Apps to Museums.”

On Wednesday February 19th, SDSU hosted Dr. Naomi Hamer for her talk, “Enter Through the Gift Shop: Transmedia Storytelling and the Picture Book from Mobile Apps to Museums.”

Dr. Naomi Hamer with Dr. Angel Matos

Dr. Naomi Hamer is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Ryerson University and the co-author of “More Words About Pictures: Current Research on Picture Books and Visual/Verbal Texts for Young People”, as well as the co-editor for Genesis Journal. She is a children’s literature and settler scholar and studies cultural theory, identity, and audience studies, among many other exciting topics! Although she is highly knowledgeable in a wide range of topics, this specific talk focused on her book that is currently under review, Enter Through the Gift Shop: Cross-media Play with the Picture Book from Mobile App to Museum. She described the content as the “greatest hits” of her research. 

Loading screen of the Pisim App Developed by 

Dr. Hamer & Her Fellow Colleagues

As Dr. Hamer explains, picture books rarely are designed just as a singular book. Many are quickly followed by merchandise, movies, and sometimes sequels. This is where her studies of children’s literature and other forms of children’s media converge. 

Although apps on various electronic devices are often seen as in opposition to a physical book, Dr. Hamer argues against condemning technology based on the sentimentality and tradition of reading a solitary, physical book. She instead advocates for reading and analyzing apps and corresponding literature in conjunction. These apps are a new remediated form, often interacting with the real world in virtual or augmented reality, and many provide an intersection of oral storytelling and materiality. An example of this is a story app with a projector, but there are many other ways of transmedia storytelling for children that can be found just on a phone. 

There is a cultural value of picture book art, as seen in museums which feature children’s books and their authors, such as the Mo Willems traveling exhibit and The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art located in Massachusetts. However, almost all museums are heavily regulated, exemplified with iPads in exhibits locked both physically and virtually, thus limiting a child’s interaction, unlike if they were given a book or something else with a wider range of motion and exploration. Children are given the opportunity to express creativity, but in an isolated area and with limited forms.

Children’s art station at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Personal Photo 2016. 

It can be suggested that these children’s museums exist more as a kind of giant advertisement than a place of learning, as suggested in the title of Dr. Hamer’s book and talk, Enter Through the Gift Shop. Sometimes, the only way of entering or leaving a museum is through, or at least walking past, the gift shop with tie-in merchandise ready for kids (and their parent’s credit card). Dr. Hamer pointed out the irony that the only interaction available to young viewers in the museum is this merchandise. 

The inspiration for the title of the talk

Moseum shop image. New York Historical Society. Personal photo 2016. 

This leads into Dr. Hamer’s work of decolonizing museums and children’s co-curatorship in museums. Framed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's Calls to Action, Dr. Hamer is a research collaborator on the Six Seasons SSHRC-funded Partnership Grant lead by  Dr. Mavis Reimer at the University of Winnipeg. The project aims to extend the creation of picture books and affiliated apps as part of a project of language and cultural reclamation as well as other processes of reconciliation. Here’s where her new app, Pisim, comes in. Pisim is an interactive story with rich illustrations and cultural notes, a fictionalized narrative of the young Cree woman found by archeologists in 1993. Pisim was developed in collaboration with Knowledge Keepers and Elders of the Asiniskaw Ithiniwak (Rocky Cree) communities of northern Manitoba. Available in both Cree and English, Pisim follows the journey of Pisim and her family and encourages reflection of Rocky Cree Culture. 

The menu of the Pisim app.

A page from the Pisim book that the app was based upon.

Unlike most museum exhibits, in which viewers can look at but cannot touch the art object, Pisim invites kids to immerse themselves in the object of their observation. Not only are kids given reign in the story, through conversation with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Dr. Hamer’s team involved Indigenous children in the process of creating the app, and children are given co-curatorship in the creation. Children are invited to help test the apps and collaborate on early pilots. Indigenous children and teens are currently testing her second application that is in progress. 

The app’s narrator: a Cree elder.

Through this app, there is remediation as a process of dialogue. Children at times are led to sit and reflect on the content of the game and its real-life meaning. Turning oral stories to applications allows for more access than going to someone from a tribe, or going to a museum. 

Dr. Hamer’s talk highlighted the fascinating trend towards the “New Literacies” that are developing for children. The screen has become a medium that transmediates canonical texts and is also a place for experimentation of new content. It has found its way into museums as an attempt for interaction, but still faces limits as to user accessibility. The transmediation from book to screen remains contested, but Dr. Hamer’s lecture revealed exciting possibilities for the future of what counts as children’s literature.

-(SS) and (AN)