Learning as Playing: An Animated, Interactive Archive of 17th-19th Century Narrative Media For and By Children

FAIN: HD-50932-10

Penn State (University Park, PA 16802-1503)
Jacqueline Reid-Walsh (Project Director: October 2009 to April 2014)

Development of an animated, interactive, web-based archive of selected 17th -19th century moveable flap books by and for children on the theme of transformation.

"Learning as Playing" is a digital planning/discovery project proposed by The Pennsylvania State University (Curriculum & Instruction, Art Education, University Libraries, and Information Technology Services/ITS) and the Cotsen Children's Library, Princeton University. The goal is to develop an animated, interactive, web-based archive of selected 17th-19th century movable books by and for children on the theme of transformation, with a start-up project on flap books. These rare, fragile, little documented artifacts combine aspects of book, print and toy, and contain movable parts. The digital innovation will enable a viewer to simulate the experience of playing with these texts by "virtual touch," preserving the originals. This project will change how the history of children's literature is understood to move from "instruction to delight" by showing how texts "of play" have been produced since the earliest manufacture. It will be a scholarly and teaching resource.

Associated Products

” Activity and Agency in historical ‘Playable media”: Early English movable books and their child interactors.” (Article)
Title: ” Activity and Agency in historical ‘Playable media”: Early English movable books and their child interactors.”
Author: Jacqueline Reid-Walsh
Abstract: This article examines examples of English movable books produced for and created by children from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries as interactive media. I analyze the interactive design of flap books, slat books, and mechanical books in comparison to contemporary pop-up books. By adapting ideas associated with digital media and applying them back I time, I analyze the design of the movable books in light of their child reader-viewer-players or interactors. By comparing early understandings of interactivity, notably of John Locke, with those of contemporary theorists, I demonstrate how a hierarchical perception of activity and agency occurred. Ultimately, I suggest how we may be able to rethink our valuation of the terms.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rchm20/current#.UzB-0raAYp0
Primary URL Description: main website for journal
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Children and Media
Publisher: Routledge

“Textual travels and transformations: Or, A tale of two lives of The Beginning, Progress and End of Man (1650).” (Article)
Title: “Textual travels and transformations: Or, A tale of two lives of The Beginning, Progress and End of Man (1650).”
Author: Jacqueline Reid-Walsh
Abstract: Based on archival research, this essay traces the travels and transformations in a little known, religious flap book The Beginning, Progress and End of Man circulating as both a published and home-produced text for around two hundred years. Composed as a strip with flaps that could be turned up or down either with or against the grain of the narrative, it contains simple rhymes with crude woodcut images. Directed to a wide audience, including children, it was first published in England during the Civil War, and occasionally re-published in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the late eighteenth century it traveled to America, was reworked into a book format and repurposed as a literacy text for a gendered child audience. It continued to be published for another hundred years. In both counties children made their own versions as domestic activities.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: //http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=198/
Primary URL Description: main website for the publisher
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Book 2.0
Publisher: Intellect

“Books or Toys? A Traveller’s Tale: Researching Early Movable Books for and by Children in Material and Virtual Collections.” (Article)
Title: “Books or Toys? A Traveller’s Tale: Researching Early Movable Books for and by Children in Material and Virtual Collections.”
Author: Jacqueline Reid-Walsh
Abstract: This essay concerns the topic of researching early movable books for and by children housed in material and digital rare books collections of early children's materials. These little known books beginning with the 17th century flap books, then the early 19th century paper doll books and toy theatres predate the elaborate Victorian movables that form the basis of the "pop-up book" today. Using an auto-ethnographic framework, the essay discusses the challenges and advantages of working in each domain.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://web.archive.org/web/20121102013257/http://www.paperschildlit.com/index.php/papers/index
Primary URL Description: website of journal
Access Model: open
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature
Publisher: Deakin University and Australasian Children’s Literature Association for Research

Unfolding Metamorphosis: The Learning as Playing Blgo (Blog Post)
Title: Unfolding Metamorphosis: The Learning as Playing Blgo
Author: Jacqueline Reid-Walsh
Abstract: a reflective account of the Learning as Playing project and my study of early movable books. I started it in September 2013 and it is ongoing.
Date: 3/15/10
Primary URL: http://http://sites.psu.edu/learningasplaying/
Website: http://sites.psu.edu/learningasplaying/

Learning as Playing (Database/Archive/Digital Edition)
Title: Learning as Playing
Author: Linda Friend
Author: Jacqueline Reid-Walsh
Author: Mark Mattson
Abstract: This website in progress seeks to re-value the status of early movable books in historical accounts of children’s texts. The focus is on flap books, or turn-up books, the simplest, and earliest types composed of one or two pieces of paper cut and folded. They were published from the mid 17th century until the mid 19th century in England and America. Children also made their own examples. The site has seven links that the user clicks on for them to open. Six are presently active: background, bibliography, play, blog, and image gallery. Two are not yet active: process and links.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/digital/flapbooks.html
Primary URL Description: This is housed at Penn State University Libraries.
Access Model: open

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