Artykuły w czasopismach na temat „Toy and movale books”

The article outlines the problem of using the potential of toy books in preparing bachelor students for purposeful work on the formation of mathematical concepts in preschool children and suggests the idea of organizing the creative activity of students to design toy books with mathematical content.The article contains an overview of classifications of toy books, pedagogically characterized and methodically described examples-constructs of various types of toy books created by bachelor students. The pedagogical potential of these constructs allows us in this work to consider a toy book as a means of mathematical education for preschool children.The purpose of the study is a theoretical description and empirical understanding of the advantages of using the potential of a toy book with mathematical content in the educational activities of a university for the development of creative thinking of future preschool teachers. To achieve the goal, the following methods were used: theoretical analysis of literary sources, Internet resources, analysis of statistical data and a pedagogical experiment.The results of the study showed difficulties in mastering the method of designing a toy book with mathematical content, revealed the preferences of future educators-educators in choosing one or another type of toy book that dominates in its content a mathematical topic and methodological features of its implementation in the presented design form.The conducted research and analysis of the results allowed us to obtain data on the importance of including in the process of training future teachers-educators a creative technique - the design of toy books with mathematical content.

The toy presents a little discovered image of a culture. In addition to being an important object of nostalgia, it is also considered as a research and study subject. The rapidly increasing number of toy museums has also gained importance in transferring economic, sociological, social, and cultural characteristics of the toy. Toy museums have responsibilities such as protecting toys that are threatened with extinction during the rapid change in technology, conducting research on childhood and history of education, raising awareness of history, helping to establish intergenerational communication, and emphasizing the importance of toys in child development. Toy Museums develop educational activities for different ages and interest groups based on their collections. Effective use of collections in museums and the presentation of available resources for visitors with fun, attractive, and different learning methods is one of the characteristics of museum education. Learning from the object, which is one of the basic concepts of museum education, can provide an experience with real objects. The Ankara University Toy Museum can be used as an educational laboratory for courses in preschool, primary, and secondary school education programs within the context of its current collection. The museum can be visited with an appointment with a guide. Search and find activities through collection themes etc. are accompanied by the museum guides and educators. In this study, the evaluation of the design processes of the education booklets of the Toy Museum is determined. The booklets include museum guided tours, and structured educational activities like "before the museum, museum practice, and post museum" activities. Museum booklets have an evaluation section that enables the student to receive feedback where they are expected to make a sustainable contribution to the promotion of the museum. In this context, this paper evaluates the effectiveness of preschool, primary, and secondary school education books that were prepared for the toy museum in line with the feedback of students participating in museum education by establishing a link between the curriculum and the museum collection. Keywords: museum, toy museum, children’s culture, museum education, museum booklet

Animated comedy and adventure films are highly enjoyable to watch. In addition to being an enjoyable film, it is also suitable for viewers of all ages, ranging from children to adults. Furthermore, films of this genre are often sought after by families seeking weekend entertainment. In addition to being captivating to watch, films in this genre typically aim to impart a moral message. The "Toy Story" is a well-known animated comedy about friendship and adventure. It effectively conveys a message of friendship, a familiar theme to viewers. The film's soundtrack, "You've Got a Friend in Me", is highly memorable and strongly associated with the movie. This essay will examine the audio of this renowned film. In this study, we employed qualitative methodologies. Qualitative methods refer to research approaches that aim to comprehend phenomena in a research object by describing them using language. This study aims to analyze the musical composition of the film "Toy Story" theme song to understand its characteristics and elements comprehensively. Data collection was conducted through discography investigations, book reviews, and observations. Discographic study involves analyzing, describing, and explaining the results of auditory experiences. We examined the "Toy Story" theme song in audio format, accessible on platforms like Spotify and YouTube, and the musical score. The purpose was to facilitate the evaluation of the song's form, structure, and musical elements. "You've Got a Friend in Me" exhibits a higher level of complexity in terms of chords and melody than a usual song. It surpasses the average in chord complexity, melodic complexity, chord melodic tension, chord progression novelty, and chord-bass melodies.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an adapted form of a qualitative research method, focus group interview, for use with small children and demonstrate its use in a small-scale study. Researchers often avoid direct study of children, and study them indirectly by asking adults. This was frequent before 1990s, but today, researchers increasingly discuss research with children rather than on children. Nevertheless, in research with young children it is not possible to use all research methods, therefore the authors modified and tested one. The additional research objectives, besides verification of methodology, were to determine the pre-school children’s attitudes to books, book-related places, reading. Design/methodology/approach – The adaptation of the focus group interview involved merging the content questions of the research with a story and using a toy as the storyteller. This resembled storytelling and enabled the children to directly participate by talking to the animation toy instead of the researcher. The authors tested the method on a purposive sample of 13 pre-school children aged four and five in one public kindergarten. Findings – Despite of the belief of some experts, who claim that focus group interview is not an appropriate method to explore habits or opinions of children, the authors found that adaptation of this method for the use with small children by means of storytelling and toy animation brings positive results because it enabled gathering data directly from the children. The content results show positive attitudes towards books and reading, differences in reading interests between boys and girls, daily exposure to books and reading, both in kindergarten and at home, and quite good knowledge of book-related places, especially libraries, somewhat less bookstores. Research limitations/implications – Since this is only the first attempt to use this adapted methodological approach, it is necessary that the method is tested on different user groups and in different circumstances to further validate its suitability for this user group. Regarding the content of the study, the results cannot be generalized due to non-probability purposive sampling. Originality/value – This is the first attempt to use the adapted methodological approach for researching young children. The research may serve as a beginning and incentive for further research in this area, since only high-quality results provide good modifications and adaptations of educational programmes and activities to ensure proper development of children’s reading competences and attitudes to books and reading.

AbstractChildren’s books often feature complex material aspects. Despite that fact, little research has been done on questions of materiality in children’s and youth books. The article aims at outlining the field of the materiality of historical German-language children’s books. By analyzing historical author’s pedagogical statements as well as the design of historical children’s and youth fiction, the article summarizes different approaches concerning the materiality of children’s books. Based on the historical development and the generic study on how children modify the materiality of their books, the article further investigates the book-as-object and emphasizes the child’s point of view by scrutinizing the adult-culture book-toy distinction. It will become apparent that the specific forms of children’s book reception emerge since the materiality of the book and its exploration present a new embodied experience. The specific reception forms can be embedded into a semiotic model of the text-reader interaction in reference to Roland Barthes’ concept of écriture and scription.

We developed the “innovative multi-functional teaching toy inside and outside the tent” with situational picture books, which had several game modes for parents and children to play the game together. The result of this research was filed for an invention patent and won the Gold Medal in the International Invention Competition. We analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of commercially available tents and conducted quantitative research to understand the effectiveness of the products. In the quantitative research, a self-written questionnaire was created and tested for reliability and validity. 34 research subjects were invited to use traditional backpacks and innovative “innovative multi-functional teaching toys inside and outside the tent” and fill out a questionnaire. The result was analyzed to understand the new products.

In the article, the main tendencies of modern developing of toys industry are outlined. It is certain that the development of toys industry is intended to renewal and advance of interactivity of toys, popularization of some brands (movies, books, toys, sweets with the same characters) and intrusion of series of same toys what in a result do not meet age needs of preschool child development. In the situation of supersaturation of toys market modern toy has a range of new characteristics. And its` influence on the formation of personality not always can be predicted. In particular, the great bulk of popular toys between consumers do not promote the strengthening of the mechanism of socialization of preschool age child, maintaining of family relations, propagandize values which are not common for our nation and provoke a variety of strategies of behavior in a situation of moral choice. A toy for preschool age children is the main method in the formulation of a sign-symbolic system of representation the surrounding reality. In modern sociocultural situation cooperation with this integral feature of childhood requires constant pedagogical support, which involves the selection of toys with taking into account their educational potential and forecasting their potential results on the personality.

A new monograph by M. S. Kostyukhina, author of the books “Toy in Chil- dren’s Literature”, “Children’s Oracle”. Through the Pages of Desk-Printed Books”, explores the dynamics of the principles and methods of creating the image of a dog in the Russian literature of the 19th-20th century. The review characterizes the principles of systematization of literary material, notes the role of illustrative and reference apparatus, and points out the practical significance of the monograph for educators, teachers of literature, as well as parents. Cross-cutting ideas of the monograph are identified: the relevance of children’s literature about animals to the general historical and cultural situation and the dominant literary trend, the high educational potential of such works, the gradual strengthening of not only the socially critical but also the philosophical component of such literature addressed to children.

Feast for the Eye Joan Steiner has created a series of children’s picture books, entitled Look-Alikes, based on her observations that some objects look like others. Each book consists of about 10 illustrations intended as puzzles; readers are invited to enumerate the substitutions of look-alikes for their real counterparts. A barn, for instance, is a green metal toolbox and its silo is an aerosol can with toy train tracks as its ladder. The high incidence of food and food-related items in her work flaunts our expected purpose for and context of edibles. Steiner’s inventiveness is reminiscent of the Italian mannerist painter Arcimboldo whose portraits also employ food substitutions.

Students who have communication disorders will need special help from teachers in the regular education environments. This research aims to investigate the English teaching strategies and activities for students with language impairment, especially expressive language disorder. This research used descriptive qualitative research design which focus on literature study from relevance references. The collected data were analysed descriptively, thus the English teaching strategies and classroom management for students with expressive language disorder could be formulated. The result of the study showed that teaching strategies that could improve expressive language are Modelling, Expansion, Choices, Waiting or Withholding, Imitation, Parallel Talk, Picture Communication, Paraphrase, and Place Things Out of the Child’s Reach. Meanwhile, the activities that is suitable to be applied for students with expressive language disorder during instruction through which those activities are also applicable at home practice; wordless books, books with simple text, bubbles, play dough, toy animals, trains sets or car, and play food. Therefore, by implementing those strategies and activities, it is expected the students with expressive language disorder could improve their language competency either in receptive or productive use.

The goal of this work is to develop a humanoid robot's perceptual mechanisms through the use of learning aids. We describe methods to enable learning on a humanoid robot using learning aids such as books, drawing materials, boards, educational videos or other children toys. Visual properties of objects are learned and inserted into a recognition scheme, which is then applied to acquire new object representations — we propose learning through developmental stages. Inspired in infant development, we will also boost the robot's perceptual capabilities by having a human caregiver performing educational and play activities with the robot (such as drawing, painting or playing with a toy train on a railway). We describe original algorithms to extract meaningful percepts from such learning experiments. Experimental evaluation of the algorithms corroborates the theoretical framework.

The article discusses various types of interactivity in the context of communicative design. Its emergence in the mid-20th century and modern interpretation as a media communicator are considered. The division into printed and electronic (analog and digital) media communications is emphasized. Principal attention is paid to material (printed and graphic) design products: toy books, packaging, posters, and illustrations. In general form, interactivity is understood as interaction (action of cooperation) between the individual and the design product. Linear interactivity, reactive interactivity and dialogue interactivity are analyzed. Linear interactivity is regarded as metaphysical interaction between the consumer and the design product. Reactive interactivity allows the consumer to bring to completion the design program as conceived by the author and obtain a finished design product. Dialogue interactivity cannot be implemented in a material design product without its integration with digital algorithmic or intelligent systems.

Parental interactions through play contributes significantly to child development of cognitive and executive functioning skills. In Thailand, there is little evidence of factors contributing to parental–child interactions. In response to SDG target 4.2.3 monitoring (the percentage of children under 5 years experiencing positive and stimulating home learning environments), this study aimed to assess the prevalence and profile of parental interactions with their children under the age of five. We analysed data from the 6th Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) conducted by the National Statistical Office in 2019. Face-to-face interviews with mothers and/or legal guardians were conducted. A total of 8856 children under the age of five were enrolled in this survey. Most participants, 90.3%, had engaged in at least four out of six activities with their children. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that children raised by parents with secondary or post-secondary educations had a significantly greater chance to have parental interactions than children raised by parents who completed primary education (adjusted odds ratio (AOR) = 1.66, and AOR = 2.34 for secondary and post-secondary education). Children who possessed three or more children’s books and had experience of toy play had a significantly higher chance of having parental interactions (AOR = 3.08 for book possessing, and AOR = 1.50 for the experience of toy play). Children who spent 1–3 h daily screen time had a significantly lower chance of having parental interactions than those who spent less than one hour of screen time (AOR = 0.67). In conclusion, with the emerging influence of digital technology, we recommend family and community promote parental interactions through play with young children.

The article is devoted to the study of trends in the development of modern children’s books, its impact on the formation of creativity as one of the main competencies. The basis for the development of the visual and plot components of the children’s book in the middle of the 20th century and their influence on the formation of the psycho-emotional component of the young generation of those times are retrospectively covered. Possibilities of modern book publishing for authors-writers are presented. Perspective directions of publishing business development both abroad and in Ukraine are covered. The study revealed qualitative changes in the content, artistic, and architectural content of modern children's books, which are reflected in the latest plots, visual images, design, and creative approaches to putting out books. With the help of certain modern children’s books, we have proved the effectiveness of pedagogical methods of forming preschoolers’ ability to be creative in various life situations, their readiness for non-standard, original solutions, ability to be independent and choose freely, curiosity, development of imagination, courage, flexibility, mobility, etc. These are so-called “quiet books” for children which are popular nowadays. The story is told exclusively by means of illustrative material, which has its own unique author’s visual language and non-standard presentation. It develops children’s imagination and forms their tastes, non-standard thinking, ability to improvise, and encourages preschoolers’ to play. Books with an interactive narrative are of great interest to children. These are toy books, which stimulate children to create games or to become an author of a book with the help of an interesting story and illustrative material. It is offered to consider a modern children’s book not only as an information source but also as a means of stimulating preschoolers’ artistic and play activities. It is emphasized that the modern children’s book is a symbiosis of three artistic practices and might be used as artistic and game material in the educational process of PEI. The influence of books on the preschoolers’ psycho-emotional, personal-behavioral, artistic-activity development, as well as their creativity formation, is clarified practically.

Beginning in Los Angeles, California, in the 1970s, and also known as pop surrealism, the Lowbrow art movement was born as a part of punk music, comic books, street and skateboard cultures and is seen in all fields of art. This study is the reflection of the Lowbrow art movement on visual design fields such as illustration graphic design and typography, animation and designer toys. Lowbrow artists were difficult to be adopted in the arts and design fields in the first years of the movement, because they did not have a diploma in fine arts and came from the street culture. But in recent years, Lowbrow artists have proved themselves and have begun to produce art and design works that are exhibited in different fields. The aim of this study is to emphasise the importance of Lowbrow art, which is seen as a subculture today. Keywords: Lowbrow, pop surrealism, street art, illustration, designer toy, subculture, visual design.

Social Media is everything in this age and time. It is no longer that “sophisticated toy” created for the pleasure of the younger generation. Institutions of learning, financial institutions, governments, and every serious organisation now has a social media presence. It has not just brought everybody together in a global village, it has equally given everybody a voice and provided a platform for a lot of vibrant young men and women who would have never had the opportunity to air their views anywhere else. But in the midst of all these is a particular concern which is if the social media translates its online impact on activism offline as well. Findings showed that it does. It doesn’t only give a voice to the voiceless, it not only mobilizes like minds online, it persuades them to act offline. Questionnaires served as primary source of data for this study while scholarly articles and books relevant to the study served as secondary source of data.

Asmund Laerdal, a patron, catalyst and leader for resuscitation developments worldwide, died from cancer at his home in Stavanger, Norway on November 19, 1981. At the funeral services on America's Thanksgiving Day, we said thanks for what he has given the world. He was a great man, whose quiet, but determined, manners and eagerness to help whenever he perceived a need, earned him much respect and love.Asmund Laerdal was born in Norway on October 11, 1913. He went to business school, traveled throughout Europe by bicycle during his youth, married Margit in 1939, and started a small printing business in 1940. Nazi occupation between 1941 and 1945 threatened his life, but did not wreck his little company. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s he printed childrens' books and calendars and made inexpensive wooden and plastic toys. The latter included “Anne Doll,” the “toy of the year,” made of soft plastic, with sleeping eyes and natural hair.

The birth and rapid development of the internet into one of the cheapest communication infrastructures and, a wide acceptance rate. By bringing the advantages of the internet such as 24-hour service, access from all directions at a relatively low cost, and other conveniences. Golfy Toys Store is a toy store that only markets via offline marketing by making banners and other offline marketing tools. The process of selling goods is usually still written in the sales book. This affects the revenue earned. A sales system is needed, namely a system that can help speed up the process of making notes that are already automatic, so they don't need to be written on books. The results with this website-based sales system are to help stores improve store branding and provide added value in business models that will strengthen the competitive value of their business in the future amid intense competition with shops selling similar products.

The contemporary market of books for children and teenagers, despite observable short-term periods of decline, is still one of the most stable and profitable segments of the Polish publishing and book market as publishing industry reports show. Publishing houses obtain guaranteed profits first of all from global bestsellers targeted both at the youngest readers and at teenagers. The present article discusses the phenomenon of branding, i.e. the creation of global brands in the sector of books for young readers. Branding has now become an important instrument of international book marketing, while the so-called brand policy occupies a significant position in the marketing tactics of publishers operating in the segment of books for young readers. The observation of the media in the worldwide and domestic market allows us to see a ten-dency towards the professionalisation of children’s culinary culture. A manifestation of this phenom-enon is inter alia the development of the toy industry associated with the manufacture of culinary accessories, as well as the annexation of the media space reserved for children and the young. Within it, we can notice the multiplication of culinary TV programmes, while more and more Internet culin-ary projects, little chef online games, and applications for mobile devices are becoming available. A culinary “thematic turn” is also taking place in the book market for children and young people. After 1989, impressive qualitative and quantitative changes took place in the cookbook segment for the youngest readers. This evolution covered their new thematic variants and editorial styles, as well as media formats (culinary audiobooks and e-books), which reflected the global fash-ions and ideas characteristic of consumer culture, as well as evidenced the culinary emancipation of the youngest. The report will show diverse variants of present-day cookbooks for young readers linked with children’s entertainment supersystems.

AbstractWe examined the functions of mothers’ speech to infants during two tasks – book-sharing and bead-stringing – in low-income, ethnically diverse families. Mexican, Dominican, and African American mothers and their infants were video-recorded sharing wordless books and toy beads in the home when infants were aged 1;2 and 2;0. Mothers’ utterances were classified into seven categories (labels/descriptions, emotion/state language, attention directives, action directives, prohibitions, questions, and vocal elicitations) which were grouped into three broad language functions: referential language, regulatory language, and vocalization prompts. Mothers’ ethnicity, years of education, years living in the United States, and infant sex and age related to mothers’ language functions. Dominican and Mexican mothers were more likely to use regulatory language than were African American mothers, and African American mothers were more likely to use vocalization prompts than were Latina mothers. Vocalization prompts and referential language increased with mothers’ education and Latina mothers’ years living in the United States. Finally, mothers of boys used more regulatory language than did mothers of girls. Socio-cultural and developmental contexts shape the pragmatics of mothers’ language to infants.

The Animated Statue. An Intermedial Analysis of Statue Ekphraseis in Picture Books This article examines the animation of statues in three Scandinavian picture books: Göran och draken (2002) by Ulf Stark and Anna Höglund, Hva skal vi gøre med lille Jill? (1976) by Fam Ekman and Malte möter Ängel en majkväll på Millesgården (2001) by Maria Hellstadius Wiberg and Karin Södergren. The transformation of humans from organic to inorganic matter is part of an abundant mythopoeia, which calls for a closer examination of the statue motif in children’s literature. This article examines the statue motif, aiming to shed light on the animated statue that children’s books with its dual audience can address. The modern western picturebook, with its strong affinity to the visual arts, is especially pertinent to this area of inquiry. This article employs an intermedial perspective in order to clarify how the animation of statues differs from that of toys. In contrast to a toy, a statue is a representation and therefore an index for something absent or alienated. The statue is a transformation, more precisely an ekphrasis (Bruhn 2000). This study therefore utilizes the differential model of Robillard (2010), designed to mark different medial relations between the ekphrasis and the plastic object, in order to uncover particular relations and the way in which they suggest associations to statue-ekphrasis. This analysis shows that animation is an artistic device relying on intermedial connections to depict conditions of mix-up, confusion, metamorphosis and reverie. The concept of a magic space is also addressed. On one hand, animation suggests art’s imaginative ability to enrich and breathe life into representations. On the other hand, statue-ekphrasis that brings forth the Verfremdungseffekt illustrates and raises awareness of the complex relation between fiction and nonfiction, life and death.

This article is devoted to the integration of traditional rag dolls into the play activities of preschool children. The content of the article is based on the author’s big working experience. Knowledge of the preschool childhood and traditional dolls allows the author to prove the possibility of using a folk rag doll in the play activities of modern preschoolers. The works of well-known psychologists, teachers, art historians, researchers of folk culture are considered as a conceptual basis for solving the selected problem. On the basis of theoretical analysis, the conditions of the most successful introduction of the traditional rag doll into the play activity of preschool children are put forward. The article reveals the stages of working with children (motivational, preparatory and activity). The content of each stage is disclosed in detail, indicating non-traditional manuals and play equipment. As an unconventional manual, it is proposed to use didactic toy books that help to acquaint children with Russian folk costume, its ensemble, decor, and accessories. There is also given a description of the play landscape rugs, their classification and characteristics. The article proposes the author’s development of the technology for the inclusion of a traditional rag doll in the play activity of modern preschoolers.

<p>It is essential for children in their early childhood to possess early literacy. Over the past decade, there has been relatively limited exploration of multisensory approaches to enhance literacy skills in early childhood. Consequently, this study aims to conduct a scoping review to identify and synthesize research supporting multisensory programs as an early literacy intervention for children. We conducted searches in seven databases that were published from 2012 to 2022, resulting in the inclusion of sixteen articles meeting the specified criteria. Our findings reveal several forms of multisensory programs that parents can carry out to improve early literacy skills: i) visual (e.g., drawing, interpreting the meaning of the words/sentences they read, playing with alphabet cards, reading words or sentences correctly, and reading labels on food and toy packaging); <br />ii) auditory (e.g., singing, reading story books, mentioning letter sound symbols, spelling syllables, language activities, speeches, and storytelling); iii) kinesthetic (e.g., dividing words according to syllables in children using media strips, writing, clapping, marching, dancing, and drama); and <br />iv) tactile (e.g., write the word with the index finger on the flannel/cloth). Most of the included studies employed experimental or quasi-experimental study designs. Thus, future studies are advised to incorporate randomized controlled trials.</p>

Justice is comparative in nature and may have plural impartial dimensions. Provision of justice, in an ‘ideal sense’, is non-pragmatic and is therefore impossible to deliver, argues the Nobel Laureate, Amartya Sen. He divides the existing theories of justice into two categories: the transcendental institutionalism and the Comparative School. The transcendental institutionalism, led by eminent enlightenment philosophers like Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau and Kant holds that a just society can be maintained by ensuring justice in the ‘ideal sense’. The provision of ‘ideal justice’ is based on the notion of either right or wrong. To provide justice in the ‘ideal sense’ the society must enjoy access to ‘just institutions’. John Rawl, the more recent contributor to transcendental tradition, came up with his theory of ‘justice as fairness’ in the mid twentieth century. The comparative school of justice propagated by Adam Smith, Marquis de Condorcet, Carl Marx and Stuart Mill lays emphasis upon looking at ‘justice’ in a comparative sense and on the basis of what the society is actually able to realise.Sen, disagreeing with both the schools of thought, however, is seen leaning towards the comparative school. The author gives the example of three children and a single flute to demonstrate how the ‘ideal justice’ and the ‘comparative’ school fail to hold water in certain situations. Three children—Carla, Anne and Bob, claim their right to a specific flute on different but competing principles. Carla manufactured the flute, Anne is the only one among the three who can play the flute, while Bob is the poorest of the three and does not have any toy to play with. Sen questions how ‘ideal justice’ may be provided with the transcendental approach, or how the ‘comparative assessment’ would lead to an impartial and non-arbitrary solution, in the case of the ‘three children and a flute’. Despite his disagreement with both the schools of thought, Sen aligns himself with the comparative school. However he believes that for provision of ‘impartial justice’ competing principles need not essentially be unique; these could be plural as well. The plurality of competing principles is the essence of Sen’s ‘idea of Justice’.

The article discusses how the taboo theme of incest is narrated both visually and verbally in the controversial Norwegian picturebook Blekkspruten (The Squid) from 2016, authored by the famous Norwegian artists Gro Dahle, a writer, and Svein Nyhus, an illustrator. The duo had previously tackled numerous contentious themes in their books, such as domestic abuse, gender disparity and mental illness, but this time the subject seems particularly problematic to present in a children’s book. Since both Dahle and Nyhus explicitly advocate a concept of allalderlitteratur (literature for all age groups), the implied readership of Blekkspruten includes young, inexperienced readers, too. The analysis focused on the mode in which the artists acquainted children with incest, and the answer was the intricate metaphorical message rendered both in the text and in the images. Their pregnant, yet subtle imagery and sophisticated interaction made it possible to narrate the difficult, challenging theme for children. Furthermore, the investigation responds to Dorte Karrebæk’s suggestion to devote more reflection to the illustrators’ work as a continuum. It juxtaposes Nyhus’ illustrations from Blekkspruten with his previous works, showing both his new artistic solutions (different lines, shapes and colours) and references to some visual symbols employed before (open or closed containers, a monkey toy, a key). They recur in an intervisual, self-referential play, often participating in construction of open endings and implying the impossibility of giving unequivocal answers.

IntroductionIn response to the spread of COVID-19, many Brazilian therapists faced the challenge of taking their practices online considering legal and ethical issues, besides learning to handle new technologies in a way the therapeutic setting was maintained. The cooperation of the family is fundamental for the creation and maintenance of an adequate therapeutic setting. Children are not sufficiently mature to speak clearly about what bothers them or to talk about how they feel and why, so, drawing, pretend playing, story telling, playing games are the common tools for children’s communication during therapy.ObjectivesEvaluating if online therapy for children can support therapeutic play tools and be effective in a virtual environment preserving the therapeutic setting.MethodsTwo children aged 6 to 11 attended the psychological sessions that were conducted through video calls.The family should provide a silent and private room for those sessions. The children were free to choose the toy they would like to play with and that was available at home such as board games, comic and story books. Mimicry, drawing, an adaptation of the Winnicott Squiggle Game were used, as well as electronic games through screen sharing.ResultsThe emotional conflicts were expressed either through conventional games and play or electronic games. Playing with children online was possible as well as maintaining the therapeutic alliance in order to carry on with the treatment in a proper therapeutic setting.ConclusionsOnline therapy for kids showed to be an effective form of service delivery, under strict measures of social distancing in Brazil.

Before the October Revolution, political exiles and Jewish refugees spread the image of Russia as a vast prison, riven by violence and corruption. After the Revolution, émigrés who scattered across the globe broadcast their idea of a fabulous, high-spirited Russia. Cabaret – an arena for theatrical innovation, stylistic experimentation, and avant-garde audacity – was a choice medium to dramatize this idea to non-Russian audiences. Throughout the 1920s, émigré cabarets enjoyed great popularity: Nikita Baliev's Chauve- Souris in New York, Jurij Jushnij's Die Blaue Vogel in Berlin, J. Son's Maschere in Italy, among others. Although the acts were polyglot and the compère pattered away in a pidgin version of whichever language was current, the chief attraction was an artificial Russian - ness. Cabarets promulgated a vision of a fairy-tale, toy-box Russia, akin to the pictures on Palekh boxes. This candy-box depiction was then perpetuated by nightclubs staffed by waiters in Cossack blouses and balalaika orchestras. Nostalgic regret for a factitious homeland deepened among the departed. In contrast, Soviet Russia came to look even more hostile and desolate. With time, the distance between the lives they had lived and those portrayed to foreigners increased, and became unmoored from reality. Laurence Senelick's most recent books include Soviet Theater: a Documentary History (2014, with Sergei Ostrovsky), the second, enlarged edition of A Historical Dictionary of Russian Theatre (2015), and Jacques Offenbach and the Making of Modern Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Like most kids of my age and time, I was a pack rat in my youth, collecting toy cars, trucks, and tanks; comic books; baseball cards; postage stamps, and … chronological tables. Unfortunately for my later financial well-being, I kept—and kept up with—only the last. I remember little specific about the primal urge to collect these lists, but I remember enough to recall that I was entirely naive at the beginning. I wanted exotic names, exotic places, and exotic dates. Most of all I wanted dates. It did not disturb me in the least when I found out that Arakan was founded in 2666 BC, and that a complete list of its rulers until 1784 A.D. had been preserved for my edification. A strictly successive treatment of the thirty dynasties of pharaonic Egypt was infinitely preferable to new-fangled efforts to reduce this chronology by over 2000 years by shortening reigns and insisting that more than one dynasty ruled at a time. It seemed only natural to me that scores of European bishoprics were able to trace their episcopal lines right back to immediately post-New Testament times. I must have seen historical time as an infinitely replicable vacuum that needed to be filledThis idyll did not last very long—a sea change was all too soon in arriving. It probably was not an epiphany, but a gradual realization that I was encountering other lists of the same offices that were replete with gaps, disagreements, and question marks rather than dates.

After twenty-three years of the fourth democratic republic in Nigeria, there is a strong temptation to presume that democracy has taken firm roots at the grassroots. However, the whimsical manner by which the state Governors have subverted and hijacked the Local Governments (LGs) structures in their respective states suggests the contrary. The 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) makes provisions for elected LG Councils, yet, the Governors having being in firm charge have rendered these provisions illusory. They toy with the autonomy and vitality of the LGs, interfering and removing elected LG officials at their fancies. This study assesses the role of the state Governors in the determination of representations at the LG level in Nigeria and its effects in providing credible leadership for rural development. Data were gathered through primary and secondary sources such as 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended), books relevant to the present study, peer review journal articles, judicial precedents, internet materials and newspaper reports. The above data were subject to content analysis. The paper finds that the LG elections in Nigeria are not given premium position by many state governments which robs the nation of a structured leadership development avenue. It also finds that the Electoral Management Body in the states are not independent. The paper, therefore, proffers Constitutional reforms as the way out of the wood. This will not only stop the Governors from acting capriciously and as omnipotent emperors, it will also allow the LGs enhance their capacity for optimum utilization of local initiatives through democratic means.

The article presents the results of the study «Attitude of parents to the problem of toys in a child's life: socio-pedagogical aspect». It is noted that toys play a significant role in the upbringing, development, socialization of the child. At that time, the responsibility for choosing/purchasing toys remains with adults. The study was conducted in November-December 2021 in Khmelnitsky and Zhytomyr regions among men and women aged 20 years and older with at least one child. The results obtained made it possible to state a number of issues in the stated problems: parents do not always understand educational, didactic, etc. importance of toys in a child's life. Toys for children are bought mainly by women; men, in a certain way, are removed from this issue; also because many women are forced to raise children without men. Among the selected clusters of toys, toys-characters and toys-replicas of real objects are more often bought, compared with toys-space markers and educational toys. A significant number of participants confirmed that regardless of the age of the children, they use gadgets (mobile phones) as toys. Parents do not always realize the degree of their responsibility for the safety of children online and in social space, which have modern gadgets as toys. Among the participants in the experiment, there are many men and women who do not distinguish/identify the concepts of «toy», «games», «game activity». In the context of responsible fatherhood, we also consider the fact that a quarter of the women and men surveyed showed that instead of toys they read books with their children and watch cartoons/movies as positive results in the context of responsible fatherhood.

<p>Essentially writing is form of thinking on paper, and a way of learning. According to Winston Churchill, writing a book is an adventure. "To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public." On the other hand, writing could be a form of freedom by escaping the madness of a period, and reducing the anxiety. In many situations the authors write to save themselves, to survive as individuals.</p><p>Gheorghe Păun is an example of a person affirming his own existence by writing. He is a prolific writer with a huge number of papers: tens of scientific books, hundreds of articles, several novels, poems, and books on games. A list of his scientific publications is posted at http://www.imar.ro/~gpaun/papers.php [2], while his books are listed at http://www.imar. ro/~gpaun/books.php [1] His way of distributing information is not by speaking, but by writing. Gheorghe Păun did not like very much to teach in universities. He preferred a form of "teaching by researching", combining ideas with nice metaphors and distributing his knowledge in articles and books. In this way he wrote several papers having a high impact in the scientific community. His seminal paper "Computing with membranes" published in Journal of Computers and System Sciences in 2000 and his fundamental book on computation theory "Membrane Computing" (Springer, 2003) has over 1,000 citations [6] (and his author was recognized as an "ISI highly cited researcher" [5]). He has defined new branches, new theories. The field of membrane computing was initiated by Gheorghe Păun as a branch of natural computing [3]; P systems are inspired by the hierarchical membrane structure of eukaryotic cells [4]. An impressive handbook of membrane computing was published recently (2010) by Oxford University Press.</p><p> </p><p>After 1990 he becomes a traveling scientist, visiting several countries and receiving many research fellowships and awards. Fruitful scientific collaboration at Magdeburg University (Germany), and at University of Turku (Finland). The trio Gheorghe Păun, Grzegorz Rozenberg and Arto Salomaa is well-known for several successful books. The last years were spent in Spain, first in Tarragona and now in Sevilla. Several collaborations were possible during his trips, and there are over 100 co-authors from many countries. His scientific reputation is related to the large number of invited talks provided at many international conferences and universities. He is a member of the editorial boards for several international journals, corresponding member of the Romanian Academy (from 1997), and member of Academia Europaea (from 2006).<br /> It is not possible to understand the personality of Gheorghe Păun without mentioning his activity as writer of novels and poems; he is a member of the Romanian Writers Association for a long time. Another aspect of his life is related to the intellectual seduction of games; he was the promoter of GO in Romania, writing many books about GO and other "mathematical" games.</p><p><br /> Personally, I am impressed by the speed of his mind (it is enough to say few words about some new results, and he is able to complete quickly the whole approach), his wide-ranging curiosity and intelligence, rich imagination and humor, talent and passion. He is highly motivated by challenging projects, and work hard to conclude them successfully. There are very few scientists having such an interesting profile, and I am very happy to learn a lot from him.</p><p><br /> Celebrating his 60th birthday, we wish him a good health, long life, and new interesting achievements!</p>

A Review of: McKechnie, Lynne (E.F.). “ ‘Spiderman is not for Babies’ (Peter, 4 Years): The ‘Boys and Reading Problem’ from the Perspective of the Boys Themselves.” The Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science 30.1/2 (2006): 57-67. Objective – This study looks at what constitutes legitimate reading material for boys and how this material is defined in light of assessed gender differences in reading, and is part of a larger, ongoing research project on the role of public libraries in the development of youth as readers. Design – Semi-structured, qualitative interviews and book inventories. Setting – The research originated from the MLIS 566 (Literature for Children and Young Adults) class at the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada. Subjects – Forty-three boys, ages four through twelve, were interviewed. Most of the boys lived in Ontario, although a few came from other Canadian provinces. Methods – Library school students who were registered in a Literature for Children and Young Adults class interviewed children and young adults about their reading and information practice as part of a “Book Ownership Case Study” assignment. The researcher also interviewed children and young adults, for a total of 137 case studies. For the purpose of this article, a data subset for the 43 boys included in the larger project was analyzed. The boys ranged in age from four to twelve years. The mean age was eight and the median age was nine. The theoretical perspective of reader response theory was used to situate the study. This theory has the relationship between the text and the reader as its focus, and it suggests that to understand the reading habits of boys, there needs to be recognition that the experts about their reading are the boys themselves. The interviews, which explored reading preferences and practices, were qualitative, semi-structured, and took thirty minutes to complete. In addition to the interview, each boy’s personal book and information material collection was inventoried. The researcher used a grounded theory approach to analyze the inventory and interview data to pull out themes related to the research questions. Grounded theory “uses a prescribed set of procedures for analyzing data and constructing a theoretical model” from the data (Leedy and Ormrod 154). Main Results – The collection inventories revealed that all 43 study participants had personal collections of reading materials. The collections ranged from eight volumes to 398 volumes. There was a mean volume total of 108 and a median of 98 books per boy. In addition to books, other materials were in the collections. Video recordings were owned by 36 (83.7%) of the boys, 28 (65.1%) of participants had computer software, 28 (65.1%) owned audio recordings, and 21 (48.8%) of the collections also included magazines. In the interview data analysis, a number of themes were revealed. All of the boys except one owned fiction. Some genres appeared frequently and were different than the ones found in the inventories taken of the girls in the larger study. Genres in the boys’ collections included fantasy, science fiction, sports stories, and humorous stories. The boys also discussed genres they did not enjoy: classic children’s fiction, such as The Adventures of Robin Hood, love stories, and “books about groups of girls” (61). All but five boys had series books such as Animorphs, Captain Underpants, Redwall, and Magic Treehouse in their collections. All study participants except for one owned non-fiction titles. When asked what their favourite book was, many of the boys chose a non-fiction title. Holdings included subjects such as “jokes, magic, sports, survival guides, crafts, science, dictionaries, maps, nature, and dinosaurs” (62). In addition to books, the boys reported owning and reading a wide range of other materials. Comics, manga, magazines, pop-up and other toy books, sticker books, colouring books, puzzle books, and catalogues were among the collection inventories. Only one boy read the newspaper. Another theme that emerged from the interview data was “gaming as story” (63). The boys who read video game manuals reported reading to learn about the game, and also reading to experience the game’s story. One boy’s enjoyment of the manual and the game came from the narrative found within. Various reading practices were explored in the interviews. Formats that featured non-linear reading were popular. Illustrations were important. Pragmatic reading, done to support other activities (e.g., Pokeman), was “both useful and pleasurable” (54). And finally, the issue of what counts as reading emerged from the data. Many boys discounted the reading that “they liked the best as not really being reading” (65). Some of the boys felt that reading novels constituted reading but that the reading of computer manuals or items such as science fair project books was “not really reading” (65). A distinction was made between real books and information books by the boys. Conclusions – The researcher explored what has been labelled as the “problem” of boys reading in this paper. She found that the 43 boys in this study are reading, but what they are reading has been undervalued by society and by the boys themselves. Collection inventories found a large number of non-fiction books, computer magazines, comic books, graphic novels, and role-playing game manuals—items not necessarily privileged by libraries, schools, or even by the boys themselves. The researcher suggests that “part of the ‘boys and reading problem’ then lies in what we count as reading” (66). By keeping what boys are actually reading in mind when it comes to collection development and library programming, children’s librarians can “play a central role in legitimizing the reading practices of boys” (66).

<p>Every child has a unique way of acquiring a language on his way to communicate with people around them. Some children find his way easily to ‘a good and appropriate pronunciation’ while other children ‘create’ his own and unique way. Understanding the pattern of unique or ‘false’ pronunciation can help parents understand their children’s language and be able to respond them appropriately. The study is aimed at describing the pattern of a baby boy’s pronunciation named Ghazi. Ghazi is 2.7 years old. He is mostly taken care by his mom who is a housewife and Dad who likes to spend his time feeding him. Ghazi is a healthy and energetic kid, surrounded by books for children to read and cartoons from youtube to watch. His favorite toy is hot wheels and show a big interest in animals. He has travelled across half of the country, visited many different places, and met different people and relatives to whom he communicates and makes friend easily. Based on his age, Ghazi are in the stage of telegraphic in which children have achieved the competence of SVO structure although still in imperfect grammar which Ghazi has proven to be true for himself. However, Ghazi has his unique ways of pronouncing words which shows particular pattern which is interesting to describe. The study focuses on the pattern of Ghazi’s pronounciation of consonants in the initial and final position and vowels. The results show that: a) Ghazi finds difficulties in pronouncing some consonants in the initial position. The [p] and [b] phonemes become [ʨ] and [d] as in the example [pɔli] becomes [ʨɔyi], [bɔla] becomes [dɔya]; Some phonemes are not spoken at all such as ‘m’ in [mɔbil] which becomes [ɔbin]; b) Ghazi also finds it difficult to pronounce some consonants in the final position. For example, [ɑpel] becomes [ɑpɑn], [panjaŋ] becomes [dɑdɑn], and [mundur] becomes [undun]; c) Ghazi finds some difficulties in pronouncing certain consonants in the initial position but not in the final position. For example, ‘t’ in the initial position is changed such as [t<strong>ə</strong>man] becomes [ʨɔman] but ‘t’ in the final position such as [p<strong>ə</strong>sɑwɑt]’ becomes [ʨuʨɑwɑt] which shows no error; d) Ghazi’s difficulties in pronouncing vowels are seen in the example such as [s<strong>ə</strong>rɑm],[g<strong>ə</strong>lɑp], and [k<strong>ə</strong>rɑs] which become [ʨɔyɑm], [dɔyɑp], and [tɔyɑs] in which that [<strong>ə]</strong> phoneme becomes [ɔ]. Other vowels do not result in similar difficulties for him. Further researchers are encouraged to find the uniqueness of every child’s pattern of pronunciation to get insight on how children find their own way to a more accepted pronunciation.</p>

Background. The children’s opera in all its diversity has undergone a rapid path to its formation and development, responding to changes in the art and aesthetic space of musical culture. The active being and the practical use of this phenomenon only emphasize the gaps in musicology science more acutely. Some researchers combine with the notion of «children’s opera» both works that involve children to participate in the performing process, and those which are aimed at a certain age audience. Other authors put the term «opera for children» as universal, but use it to describe various works. However, if the information about this genre is contained in the scientifi c literature, research on opera for children-performers analogue, children’s operetta which was formed and used by considerable demand in the late 19th – in the fi rst half of the 20th century in the English-speaking countries, is practically absent. This determines the relevance of the chosen subject. Objectives. The objective of this study is to consider the features of the libretto, the compositional and dramaturgical properties of the children’s operetta by J. L. Gaynor The House that Jack Built as one of the English-language samples of the genre. Methods. So far these methods were been applied: historical, structural and functional, comparative. Results. It is diffi cult to indicate the exact date of the children’s operetta emergence. It is known from available literature that it became widespread in the 1880s. In the following decades, the popularity of children’s operettas does not fade, rather, it only grows. The school authorities even were worried about such an intensity of extracurricular work. However, this fact did not affect the number of performances. There are books containing instructions and guidance, tips on probable diffi culties that could be faced by fi rst-time directors. In particular, it was recommended to divide responsibilities between school departments and draw up a general plan of action. Attention was paid to organizing an advertising campaign to attract as many viewers as possible. With such performance enthusiasm, there was a certain lack of repertoire written specifi cally for children and adolescents. Not surprisingly, the music teachers sought to replenish it. Among them was an American piano and harmony teacher Jessie Lovel Smith Gaynor (1863–1921) who composed The House that Jack Built (1902). This is not the only sample of children’s operetta in the heritage of J. L. Gaynor, she wrote a few more works, mostly after fairy tales: The Lost Princess Bo-Peep (its plot matches Jack’s one), The Toy Shop, Snow White, The Magic Wheel, Three Wishes, The Return of Proserpina, and On Plymouth Rock. The libretto of The House that Jack Built, written by A. G. D. Riley, is compiled on the basis of nursery rhymes, which are an integral part of the English-speaking countries culture. The operetta includes 24 folklore texts (full or fragmented): poems, two counters, and a ballad. To organize the plot, the librettist used the «stringing» method, or the cumulative principle, joining each subsequent element to the previous one with the help of the Mother Goose’s recitative lines. She is the key character, who greets and introduces new guests at her party. This principle is refl ected in the organization of the whole operetta. Mother Gooses’ cues are a refrain similar to the poem The House that Jack Built. Each character is not related to the previous one or the next, they are united only by belonging to the images of folk poetry. Since the libretto is mainly based on miniatures (with one or two verses), there are many participants of the performance: 43 characters, 21 thrushes, and collective characters, the number of which is not specifi ed precisely. There is no plot in common sense – as a series of related events built in accordance with certain principles – in The House that Jack Built. Rather, it reminds the carnival procession, in which characters are appearing one by one. They have bright, sometimes extravagant costumes, which vary with the speed of the pattern in the kaleidoscope. The structure of the operetta is simple and clear. It consists of two acts, divided into 19 big numbers (9 in the fi rst action, 10 in the second), which are often built in the form of a suite. The balance among solo-ensemble and choral numbers in The House that Jack Built is unequal. The choruses prevail in the operetta (there are about 20 of them). It is diffi cult to name the exact number because the author does not always clarify the exact cast. Solo and ensemble numbers are 4 times fewer; in addition, there are 2 numbers in the 2d act, in which the soloist and choir sing together. To achieve compositional and dramatic unity, there was a need to involve additional means in addition to the cross-cutting image of Mother Goose, since the Jack’s plot is deprived of the consistent development of events. This function is performed by several themes: «fairy tale» (in the future it is associated with the appearance of fairies and elves), «pastoral» (its emergence is marked by the remark Andante Pastorale), the theme of Jack, the dance motive, and the theme of King Cole. They are exhibited in the overture for the fi rst time. When the act begins, they are joined by the themes of Mother Goose and Thrushes. For the fi rst time, most of the themes are conducted in the overture. This determines the suite character of its structure: 6 episodes that contrast with each other by tempo. The piano part plays an important role in the operetta. It presents the leading themes, the main image-bearing and poetic motives, and supports the performers in the vocal appearances. The revealed signs give grounds to consider the English-language children’s operetta a national model of opera for children-performers. Conclusions. In the English-speaking countries, particularly in the USA, at the end of the 19th – in the fi rst half of the 20th century the tradition to perform operettas at schools was formed. This works from their form and contents were similar to compositions which were called children’s operas (operas for children-performers) in Europe. An analysis of The House that Jack Built by J. L. Gaynor allows us to interpret the author’s genre name in its original linguistic meaning – «small opera». A signifi cant number of such works still remain beyond the attention of scholars and require a thorough study both in historical and in theoretical directions.

Abstract This study investigated differences in adult-child language interactions when parents and their three-to-four-year old children engage in wordless book reading, text-and-picture book reading and a small-world toy play activity. Twenty-two parents recorded themselves completing each activity at home with their child. Parent input was compared across contexts, focusing on interactive and conceptual domains: use of open prompts, expansions or extensions of children’s utterances, and use of decontextualised (abstract) language. Use of linguistic expansions was greater during book reading than toy play. Parents used open questions and added contingent conceptual information more often when reading wordless books than in both other conditions. Findings suggest that wordless books may combine the benefits of open-endedness and linguistic content based around a narrative. Parents’ use of abstract language also varied by condition. This study extends understanding of the role of activity context in shaping children’s language learning environments.

Simard, Rémy . Gustave. Illus. Pierre Pratt. Groundwood Books, 2014. Print.A young mouse has been playing with his friend, Gustav, just a little too far from home, and tragedy has struck. Pierre Pratt signals despair and disaster in the blackened pages and the first two words, “He’s gone.” The grim grey streets echo a little mouse’s grief and fear, for it is a cat who has seized Gustav. “Run. Escape.” The mouse cries on his way home, worried about what his mother will say.Just a moment… black as the story seems, grim as the dark colours are that echo the mouse’s grief, look back. Look at the eyes of the two little mice as they cling. Are Gustav’s eyes those of a living mouse, or are they those of a toy?All is dark, only to become lighter as the mouse reaches home and tells his mother what has happened. She comforts him, and when he is calm, she takes him to a cupboard where there is another little stuffed mouse with Gustav’s button eyes. The little mouse looks, little mouse eyes to toy mouse’s button eyes. The young mouse finds that he can like his new toy.Rémy Simard’s tale expresses that deep affection for a toy that brings it alive in a special relationship - think of Christopher Robin and Pooh. The loss of that toy may be devastating, but it can be relieved by an understanding adult and the coming of a new companion.A strong short tale completed by sensitive illustrations express first terror and then love and relief. That first childhood loss of a beloved companion, a teddy left on the bus, a doll abandoned at a picnic, whatever the scenario, here is the dark world of that loss and the warm comfort of a new companion.The tale may be seemingly too dark for many young children to read on their own. This is a book to share where re-assurance can make this expression of a first loss a story to appreciate.Recommended: 3 out of 4 starsReviewer: Andrea DeakinAndrea has been involved with books since she was class librarian in Primary School, Student Librarian in Grammar School, student librarian for the Education Faculty when she was a student, and school librarian in schools both in England and in Canada, except for the first two years in Canada where she arrived in 1959. When she retired from teaching ( English and History) she was invited to review in February 1971, and continued to review for press, radio, and finally on the Internet (Deakin Newsletter from Okanagan College) until she retired in 2011. Forty years seemed sufficient- although she still cannot keep her nose out of good children's and YA fare.

The move from analog distribution to online digital delivery is common in the contemporary mediascape. Music is in the midst of an ipod driven paradigm shift (Levy), television and movie delivery is being reconfigured (Johnson), and newspaper and magazines are confronting the reality of the world wide web and what it means for business models and ideas of journalism (Beecher). In the midst of this change, the book publishing industry remains defiant. While embracing digital production technologies, the vast majority of book content is still delivered in material form, printed and shipped the old-fashioned way—despite the efforts of many technology companies over the last decade. Even the latest efforts from corporate giants such as Sony and Amazon (who appear to have solved many of the technical hurdles of electronic reading devices) have had little visible impact. The idea of electronic books, or e-books, remains the domain of geeky early adopters (“Have”). The reasons for this are manifold, but, arguably, a broader uptake of e-books has not occurred because cultural change is much more difficult than technological change and book readers have yet to be persuaded to change their cultural habits. Electronic reading devices have been around for as long as there have been computers with screens, but serious attempts to replicate the portability, readability, and convenience of a printed book have only been with us for a decade or so. The late 1990s saw the release of a number of e-book devices. In quick succession, the likes of the Rocket e-Book, the SoftBook and the Franklin eBookman all failed to catch on. Despite this lack of market penetration, software companies began to explore the possibilities—Microsoft’s Reader software competed with a similar product from Adobe, some publishers became content providers, and a niche market of consumers began reading e-books on personal digital assistants (PDAs). That niche was sufficient for e-reading communities and shopfronts to appear, with a reasonable range of titles becoming available for purchase to feed demand that was very much driven by early adopters. But the e-book market was and remains small. For most people, books are still regarded as printed paper objects, purchased from a bookstore, borrowed from a library, or bought online from companies like Amazon.com. More recently, the introduction of e-ink technologies (EPDs) (DeJean), which allow for screens with far more book-like resolution and contrast, has provided the impetus for a new generation of e-book devices. In combination with an expanded range of titles (and deals with major publishing houses to include current best-sellers), there has been renewed interest in the idea of e-books. Those who have used the current generation of e-ink devices are generally positive about the experience. Except for some sluggishness in “turning” pages, the screens appear crisp, clear and are not as tiring to read as older displays. There are a number of devices that have embraced the new screen technologies (mobileread) but most attention has been paid to three devices in particular—mainly because their manufacturers have tried to create an ecosystem that provides content for their reading devices in much the same way that Apple’s itunes store provides content for ipods. The Sony Portable Reader (Sonystyle) was the first electronic ink device to be produced by a mainstream consumers electronics company. Sony ties the Reader to its Connect store, which allows the purchase of book titles via a computer; titles are then downloaded to the Reader in the same way that an mp3 player is loaded with music. Sony’s most prominent competition in the marketplace is Amazon’s Kindle, which does not require users to have a computer. Instead, its key feature is a constant wireless connection to Amazon’s growing library of Kindle titles. This works in conjunction with US cellphone provider Sprint to allow the purchase of books via wireless downloads wherever the Sprint network exists. The system, which Amazon calls “whispernet,” is invisible to readers and the cost is incorporated into the price of books, so Kindle users never see a bill from Sprint (“Frequently”). Both the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle are available only in limited markets; Kindle’s reliance on a cellphone network means that its adoption internationally is dependent on Amazon establishing a relationship with a cellphone provider in each country of release. And because both devices are linked to e-bookstores, territorial rights issues with book publishers (who trade publishing rights for particular global territories in a colonial-era mode of operation that seems to ignore the reality of global information mobility (Thompson 74–77)) contribute to the restricted availability of both the Sony and Amazon products. The other mainstream device is the iRex Iliad, which is not constrained to a particular online bookstore and thus is available internationally. Its bookstore ecosystems are local relationships—with Dymocks in Australia, Borders in the UK, and other booksellers across Europe (iRex). All three devices use EPDs and share similar specifications for the actual reading of e-books. Some might argue that the lack of a search function in the Sony and the ability to write on pages in the Iliad are quite substantive differences, but overall the devices are distinguished by their availability and the accessibility of book titles. Those who have used the devices extensively are generally positive about the experience. Amazon’s Customer Reviews are full of positive comments, and the sense from many commentators is that the systems are a viable replacement for old-fashioned printed books (Marr). Despite the good reviews—which suggest that the technology is actually now good enough to compete with printed books—the e-book devices have failed to catch on. Amazon has been hesitant to state actual sales figures, leaving it to so-called analysts to guess with the most optimistic suggesting that only 30 to 50,000 have sold since launch in late 2007 (Sridharan). By comparison, a mid-list book title (in the US) would expect to sell a similar number of copies. The sales data for the Sony Portable Reader (which has been on the market for nearly two years) and the iRex iliad are also elusive (Slocum), suggesting that they have not meaningfully changed the landscape. Tellingly, despite the new devices, the e-book industry is still tiny. Although it is growing, the latest American data show that the e-book market has wholesale revenues of around $10 million per quarter (or around $40 million per year), which is dwarfed by the $35 billion in revenues regularly earned annually in the US printed book industry ("Book"). It’s clear that despite the technological advances, e-books have yet to cross the chasm from early adopter to mainstream usage (see IPDF). The reason for this is complex; there are issues of marketing and distribution that need to be considered, as well as continuing arguments about screen technologies, appropriate publishing models, and digital rights management. It is beyond the scope of this article to do justice to those issues. Suffice to say, the book industry is affected by the same debates over content that plague other media industries (Vershbow). But, arguably, the key reason for the minimal market impact is straightforward—technological change is relatively easy, but cultural change is much more difficult. The current generation of e-book devices might be technically very close to being a viable replacement for print on paper (and the next generation of devices will no doubt be even better), but there are bigger cultural hurdles to be overcome. For most people, the social practice of reading books (du Gay et al 10) is inextricably tied with printed objects and a print culture that is not yet commonly associated with “technology” (perhaps because books, as machines for reading (Young 160), have become an invisible technology (Norman 246)). E. Annie Proulx’s dismissive suggestion that “nobody is going to sit down and read a novel on a twitchy little screen. Ever” (1994) is commonly echoed when book buyers consider the digital alternative. Those thoughts only scratch the surface of a deeply embedded cultural practice. The centuries since Gutenberg’s printing press and the vast social and cultural changes that followed positioned print culture as the dominant cultural mode until relatively recently (Eisenstein; Ong). The emerging electronic media forms of the twentieth century displaced that dominance with many arguing that the print age was moved aside by first radio and television and now computers and the Internet (McLuhan; Postman). Indeed, there is a subtext in that line of thought, one that situates electronic media forms (particularly screen-based ones) as the antithesis of print and book culture. Current e-book reading devices attempt to minimise the need for cultural change by trying to replicate a print culture within an e-print culture. For the most part, they are designed to appeal to book readers as a replacement for printed books. But it will take more than a perfect electronic facsimile of print on paper to persuade readers to disengage with a print culture that incorporates bookshops, bookclubs, writing in the margins, touching and smelling the pages and covers, admiring the typesetting, showing off their bookshelves, and visibly identifying with their collections. The frequently made technical arguments (about flashing screens and reading in the bath (Randolph)) do not address the broader apprehension about a cultural experience that many readers do not wish to leave behind. It is in that context that booklovers appear particularly resistant to any shift from print to a screen-based format. One only has to engage in a discussion about e-books (or lurk on an online forum where one is happening) to appreciate how deeply embedded print culture is (Hepworth)—book readers have a historical attachment to the printed object and it is this embedded cultural resistance that is the biggest barrier for e-books to overcome. Although e-book devices in no way resemble television, print culture is still deeply suspicious of any screen-based media and arguments are often made that the book as a physical object is critical because “different types of media function differently, and even if the content is similar the form matters quite a lot” (Weber). Of course, many in the newspaper industry would argue that long-standing cultural habits can change very rapidly and the migration of eyeballs from newsprint to the Internet is a cautionary tale (see Auckland). That specific format shift saw cultural change driven by increased convenience and a perception of decreased cost. For those already connected to the Internet, reading newspapers online represented zero marginal cost, and the range of online offerings dwarfed that of the local newsagency. The advantage of immediacy and multimedia elements, and the possibility of immediate feedback, appeared sufficient to drive many away from print towards online newspapers.For a similar shift in the e-book realm, there must be similar incentives for readers. At the moment, the only advantages on offer are weightlessness (which only appeals to frequent travellers) and convenience via constant access to a heavenly library of titles (Young 150). Amazon’s Kindle bookshop can be accessed 24/7 from anywhere there is a Sprint network coverage (Nelson). However, even this advantage is not so clear-cut—there is a meagre range of available electronic titles compared to printed offerings. For example, Amazon claims 130,000 titles are currently available for Kindle and Sony has 50,000 for its Reader, figures that are dwarfed by Amazon’s own printed book range. Importantly, there is little apparent cost advantage to e-books. The price of electronic reading devices is significant, amounting to a few hundred dollars to which must be added the cost of e-books. The actual cost of those titles is also not as attractive as it might be. In an age where much digital content often appears to be free, consumers demand a significant price advantage for purchasing online. Although some e-book titles are priced more affordably than their printed counterparts, the cost of many seems strangely high given the lack of a physical object to print and ship. For example, Amazon Kindle titles might be cheaper than the print version, but the actual difference (after discounting) is not an order of magnitude, but of degree. For example, Randy Pausch’s bestselling The Last Lecture is available for $12.07 as a paperback or $9.99 as a Kindle edition (“Last”). For casual readers, the numbers make no sense—when the price of the reading device is included, the actual cost is prohibitive for those who only buy a few titles a year. At the moment, e-books only make sense for heavy readers for whom the additional cost of the reading device will be amortised over a large number of books in a reasonably short time. (A recent article in the Wall Street Journal suggested that the break-even point for the Kindle was the purchase of 61 books (Arends).) Unfortunately for the e-book industry, not is only is that particular market relatively small, it is the one least likely to shift from the embedded habits of print culture. Arguably, should e-books eventually offer a significant cost benefit for consumers, uptake would be more dramatic. However, in his study of cellphone cultures, Gerard Goggin argues against purely fiscal motivations, suggesting that cultural change is driven by other factors—in his example, new ways of communicating, connecting, and engaging (205–211). The few market segments where electronic books have succeeded are informative. For example, the market for printed encyclopedias has essentially disappeared. Most have reinvented themselves as CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs and are sold for a fraction of the price. Although cost is undoubtedly a factor in their market success, added features such as multimedia, searchability, and immediacy via associated websites are compelling reasons driving the purchase of electronic encyclopedias over the printed versions. The contrast with the aforementioned e-book devices is apparent with encyclopedias moving away from their historical role in print culture. Electronic encyclopedias don’t try to replicate the older print forms. Rather they represent a dramatic shift of book content into an interactive audio-visual domain. They have experimented with new formats and reconfigured content for the new media forms—the publishers in question simply left print culture behind and embraced a newly emerging computer or multimedia culture. This step into another realm of social practices also happened in the academic realm, which is now deeply embedded in computer-based delivery of research and pedagogy. Not only are scholarly journals moving online (Thompson 320–325), but so too are scholarly books. For example, at the Macquarie University Library, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of electronic books in the collection. The library purchased 895 e-books in 2005 and 68,000 in 2007. During the same period, the number of printed books purchased remained relatively stable with about 16,000 bought annually (Macquarie University Library). The reasons for the dramatic increase in e-book purchases are manifold and not primarily driven by cost considerations. Not only does the library have limited space for physical storage, but Macquarie (like most other Universities) emphasises its e-learning environment. In that context, a single e-book allows multiple, geographically dispersed, simultaneous access, which better suits the flexibility demanded of the current generation of students. Significantly, these e-books require no electronic reading device beyond a standard computer with an internet connection. Users simply search for their required reading online and read it via their web browser—the library is operating in a pedagogical culture that assumes that staff and students have ready access to the necessary resources and are happy to read large amounts of text on a screen. Again, gestures towards print culture are minimal, and the e-books in question exist in a completely different distributed electronic environment. Another interesting example is that of mobile phone novels, or “keitai” fiction, popular in Japan. These novels typically consist of a few hundred pages, each of which contains about 500 Japanese characters. They are downloaded to (and read on) cellphones for about ten dollars apiece and can sell in the millions of copies (Katayama). There are many reasons why the keitai novel has achieved such popularity compared to the e-book approaches pursued in the West. The relatively low cost of wireless data in Japan, and the ubiquity of the cellphone are probably factors. But the presence of keitai culture—a set of cultural practices surrounding the mobile phone—suggests that the mobile novel springs not from a print culture, but from somewhere else. Indeed, keitai novels are written (often on the phones themselves) in a manner that lends itself to the constraints of highly portable devices with small screens, and provides new modes of engagement and communication. Their editors attribute the success of keitai novels to how well they fit into the lifestyle of their target demographic, and how they act as community nodes around which readers and writers interact (Hani). Although some will instinctively suggest that long-form narratives are doomed with such an approach, it is worthwhile remembering that, a decade ago, few considered reading long articles using a web browser and the appropriate response to computer-based media was to rewrite material to suit the screen (Nielsen). However, without really noticing the change, the Web became mainstream and users began reading everything on their computers, including much longer pieces of text. Apart from the examples cited, the wider book trade has largely approached e-books by trying to replicate print culture, albeit with an electronic reading device. Until there is a significant cost and convenience benefit for readers, this approach is unlikely to be widely successful. As indicated above, those segments of the market where e-books have succeeded are those whose social practices are driven by different cultural motivations. It may well be that the full-frontal approach attempted to date is doomed to failure, and e-books would achieve more widespread adoption if the book trade took a different approach. The Amazon Kindle has not yet persuaded bookloving readers to abandon print for screen in sufficient numbers to mark a seachange. Indeed, it is unlikely that any device positioned specifically as a book replacement will succeed. Instead of seeking to make an e-book culture a replacement for print culture, effectively placing the reading of books in a silo separated from other day-to-day activities, it might be better to situate e-books within a mobility culture, as part of the burgeoning range of social activities revolving around a connected, convergent mobile device. Reading should be understood as an activity that doesn’t begin with a particular device, but is done with whatever device is at hand. In much the same way that other media producers make content available for a number of platforms, book publishers should explore the potential of the new mobile devices. Over 45 million smartphones were sold globally in the first three months of 2008 (“Gartner”)—somewhat more than the estimated shipments of e-book reading devices. As well as allowing a range of communications possibilities, these convergent devices are emerging as key elements in the new digital mediascape—one that allows users access to a broad range of media products via a single pocket-sized device. Each of those smartphones makes a perfectly adequate e-book reading device, and it might be useful to pursue a strategy that embeds book reading as one of the key possibilities of this growing mobility culture. The casual gaming market serves as an interesting example. While hardcore gamers cling to their games PCs and consoles, a burgeoning alternative games market has emerged, with a different demographic purchasing less technically challenging games for more informal gaming encounters. This market has slowly shifted to convergent mobile devices, exemplified by Sega’s success in selling 300,000 copies of Super Monkey Ball within 20 days of its release for Apple’s iphone (“Super”). Casual gamers do not necessarily go on to become hardcore games, but they are gamers nonetheless—and today’s casual games (like the aforementioned Super Monkey Ball) are yesterday’s hardcore games of choice. It might be the same for reading. The availability of e-books on mobile platforms may not result in more people embracing longer-form literature. But it will increase the number of people actually reading, and, just as casual gaming has attracted a female demographic (Wallace 8), the instant availability of appropriate reading material might sway some of those men who appear to be reluctant readers (McEwan). Rather than focus on printed books, and book-like reading devices, the industry should re-position e-books as an easily accessible content choice in a digitally converged media environment. This is more a cultural shift than a technological one—for publishers and readers alike. Situating e-books in such a way may alienate a segment of the bookloving community, but such readers are unlikely to respond to anything other than print on paper. Indeed, it may encourage a whole new demographic—unafraid of the flickering screen—to engage with the manifold attractions of “books.” References Arends, Brett. “Can Amazon’s Kindle Save You Money?” The Wall St Journal 24 June 2008. 25 June 2008 ‹http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121431458215899767.html? mod=rss_whats_news_technology>. Auckland, Steve. “The Future of Newspapers.” The Independent 13 Nov. 2008. 24 June 2008 ‹http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article1963543.ece>. Beecher, Eric. “War of Words.” The Monthly, June 2007: 22–26. 25 June 2008 . “Book Industry Trends 2006 Shows Publishers’ Net Revenues at $34.59 Billion for 2005.” Book Industry Study Group. 22 May 2006 ‹http://www.bisg.org/news/press.php?pressid=35>. DeJean, David, “The Future of e-paper: The Kindle is Only the Beginning.” Computerworld 6 June 2008. 12 June 2008 ‹http://www.computerworld.com/action/article .do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9091118>. du Gay, Paul, Stuart Hall, Linda Janes, Hugh Mackay, and Keith Negus. Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1997. Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. “Frequently Asked Questions about Amazon Kindle.” Amazon.com. 12 June 2008 ‹http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200127480&#whispernet>. “Gartner Says Worldwide Smartphone Sales Grew 29 Percent in First Quarter 2008.” Gartner. 6 June 2008. 20 June 2008 ‹http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=688116>. Goggin, Gerard. Cell Phone Cultures. London: Routledge, 2006. Hani, Yoko. “Cellphone Bards Make Bestseller Lists.” Japan Times Online Sep. 2007. 20 June 2008 ‹http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20070923x4.html>. “Have you Changed your mind on Ebook Readers?” Slashdot. 25 June 2008 ‹http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/08/2317250>. Hepworth, David. “The Future of Reading or the Sinclair C5.” The Word 17 June 2008. 20 June 2008 ‹http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/future-reading-or-sinclair-c5>. IPDF (International Digital Publishing Forum) Industry Statistics. 24 June 2008 ‹http://www.openebook.org/doc_library/industrystats.htm>. iRex Technologies Press. 12 June 2008 ‹http://www.irextechnologies.com/about/press>. Johnson, Bobbie. “Vince Cerf, AKA the Godfather of the Net, Predicts the End of TV as We Know It.” The Guardian 27 Aug. 2008. 24 June 2008 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/aug/27/news.google>. Katayama, Lisa. “Big Books Hit Japan’s Tiny Phones.” Wired Jan. 2007. 24 June 2008 ‹http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2007/01/72329>. “The Last Lecture.” Amazon.com. 24 June 2008 ‹http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1401323251/ref=amb_link_3359852_2? pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=right-1&pf_rd_r=07NDSWAK6D4HT181CNXD &pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=385880801&pf_rd_i=549028>.Levy, Steven. The Perfect Thing. London:Ebury Press, 2006. Macquarie University Library Annual Report 2007. 24 June 2008 ‹http://senate.mq.edu.au/ltagenda/0308/library_report%202007.doc>. Marr, Andrew. “Curling Up with a Good EBook.” The Guardian 11 May 2007. 23 May 2007 ‹http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2077278,00.html>. McEwan, Ian. “Hello, Would you Like a Free Book?” The Guardian 20 Sep. 2005. 28 June 2008 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/sep/20/fiction.features11>. McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1962. Mobileread. E-book Reader Matrix, Mobileread Wiki. 30 May 2008 ‹http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix>. Nelson, Sara. “Warming to Kindle.” Publishers Weekly 10 Dec. 2007. 31 Jan. 2008 ‹http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6510861.htm.html>. Nielsen, Jakob. “Concise, Scannable and Objective, How to Write for the Web.” 1997. ‹20 June 2008 ‹http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html>. Norman, Don. The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1998. Ong, Walter. Orality & Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York: Methuen, 1988. Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death. New York: Penguin, 1986. Proulx, E. Annie. “Books on Top.” The New York Times 26 May 1994. 28 June 2008 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/23/specials/proulx-top.html>. Randolph, Eleanor. “Reading into the Future.” The New York Times 18 June 2008. 19 June 2008 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/opinion/18wed3.html?>. Slocum, Mac. “The Pitfalls of Publishing’s E-Reader Guessing Game.” O’Reilly TOC. June 2006. 24 June 2008 ‹http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/06/the-pitfalls-of-publishings-er.html>. Sridharan, Vasanth. “Goldman: Amazon Sold up to 50,000 Kindles in Q1.” Silicon Alley Insider 19 May 2008. 25 June 2008 ‹http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/how_many_kindles_sold_last_quarter_>. “Super Monkey Ball iPhone's Super Sales.” Edge OnLine. 24 Aug. 2008 ‹http://www.edge-online.com/news/super-monkey-ball-iphones-super-sales>. Thompson, John B. Books in the Digital Age. London: Polity, 2005. Vershbow, Ben. “Self Destructing Books.” if:book. May 2005. 4 Oct. 2006 ‹http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/05/selfdestructing_books.html>. Wallace, Margaret, and Brian Robbins. 2006 Casual Games White Paper. IDGA. 24 Aug. 2008 ‹http://www.igda.org/casual/IGDA_CasualGames_Whitepaper_2006.pdf>. Weber, Jonathan. “Why Books Resist the Rise of Novel Technologies.” The Times Online 23 May 2006. 25 June 2008 ‹http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article724510.ece> Young, Sherman. The Book is Dead, Long Live the Book. Sydney: UNSW P, 2007.

Dewdney, Anna. Llama Llama Gram and Grandpa. New York, NY: Viking, 2015. PrintThis is one of a series of Llama Llama books by author/illustrator Anna Dewdney. In this volume, Llama Llama is staying away from home for the first night. The rhymed story takes him from packing at home to being left at his grandparents and unpacking. It is there that he discovers that his “fuzzy llama” is missing. At bedtime he has a meltdown where “Llama’s lips begin to quiver./ Llama starts to shake and shiver./ Llama needs Fuzzy near,/but FUZZY LLAMA ISN’T HERE!”. Grandpa Llama produces his own childhood toy and all is well. The text works well as a read-aloud for the age 3-5 intended audience. While all of the creatures in the book are llamas, they are fully anthropomorphized. The llamas drive cars, eat at a table with cutlery and grow carrots in a garden. They are essentially people who look like llamas. As a result young children will easily identify with the little llama missing his “fuzzy”. Dewdney’s artwork is excellent. The colours are bright and the characters engaging. In addition to the very human facial expressions, Dewdney uses the llama’s ears to show emotion – up and perky when happy or excited, droopy when sad or lonely.This would be a good book to read with a child who is anxious about staying away from home. It provides a starting point for talking with children about separation anxiety, though distress that Llama Llama feels is more related to his missing toy than about being away from his mother. This book is highly recommended for public libraries, elementary schools and day cares.Highly recommended: 4 stars out of 4Reviewer: Sandy CampbellSandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines. Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.

Even for children growing up in (post-)industrial societies and wholly urban environments, animals are – in a way – everywhere. Representations of animals appear in and around many a cradle or child’s bed: teddy bears, tigers, pigs, sharks, crocodiles – there is hardly an animal species (or genus) unrepresented in toy form (Macho, 2022, pp. 63ff.). Wallpapers that decorate children’s rooms often figure animals, extant or extinct, cuddly (like puppies or kittens) or enjoyably terrifying (T. Rex and other dinosaurs). Children’s books, including explicitly educational ones, are populated by animal characters. Supermarkets sell dinosaur-shaped turkey nuggets – a marriage of animal representations and the flesh of real animals. Most children meet other animals, whether they are fully aware of it or not, in the form of meat on their plates.

If love is a many-splendoured thing, then many of its splendours can be seen on toy shelves occupied by recent playthings such as Luv Buds, Love and Kisses, First Love, My Puppy Loves Me and Love-A-Lot Bear. As the meaning of childhood has changed, particularly over the last 150 years (Postman), toys have become a major means of demonstrating and defining love between generations, between genders and between humans and commodities. The widespread availability of commodities, all increasingly finetuned in their prescribed meanings under a regime of rampant advertising, has been a key factor in this development, which reached an apex in the final quarter of the last century. Major toy companies grew dramatically (Stern and Schoenhaus), details of toy-play became more intricately spelt out for children (Kline), and advertising leapt into bold new fronts, not the least being 30-minute toy advertisements masquerading as children’s television programs (Kunkel). Hand in hand with these developments came more sensual elaboration of characters and themes (Kline and Pentecost), in line with general moves towards “commodity aesthetics” (Haug). Selling not just toys but warm fuzzy feelings, toy companies took up slogans such as those surrounding Cabbage Patch Kids: “A special kind of love” and “Come open your arms to a Cabbage Patch Kid” (Blyskal; Jacob, Rodenhauser and Markert). Care Bears made similar claims, each in the set distinguished by heightened sensuality and segmenting the tasks previously performed by the simpler teddy bear. Thus, while semanticists and sociologists grapple with the meaning of the word “love” and the shifting nature of the concept, modern-day toy manufacturers have utilised a number of pertinent notions to underpin their marketing efforts. Such is the importance of marketing that even the basic design of toys can be a marketer’s initiative, giving rise to toys structured specifically around love themes. This is significant because mass marketed toys act as powerful media, transmitting messages, offering interpretations and interacting with other toys and commodities, particularly in terms of communicating the appeals and joys of consumerism on which their existence so heavily relies. Modern toys are not only surrounded by massive advertising and other related texts which leave little to the child’s imagination but, due to their “collaboration” with other commodities in cross-marketing ventures, are prominently positioned to advertise themselves and each other. Messages promoting mass marketed toys are interwoven into the presentation of each toy, its advertising package and other promotional media, including books, films, mall appearances and miniaturisation in children’s packaged fast-food meals. Such schemes highlight the sensuality and appeals of the toys and their themes. Of course children – and their parents – may create oppositional meanings from those intended. The messages are not closed and not always accepted wholesale or unquestioningly, but toys, like other media, often privilege particular readings favourable to the marketplace, as Ann du Cille has pointed out in relation to race and I have noted in relation to gender. Love fits snugly into the repertoire of appeals and joys, taking several different forms, determined mostly by each toy’s target audience and marketing profile. Four of the main variations on the love theme in toys are: Representational love Substitutional love Obligatory love Romantic love I will focus on closely linked representational and substitutional love. A toy that draws on straightforward representational love for its appeal to a parent or carer is typically marketed to suggest that toys are material proof of love, important links in a chain of bonding. At its most crass, the suggestion is that one can prove one’s love for a child by showering her or him with toys, though usually claims are more sophisticated, implying issues of quality and toy genre. In 1993 toy company Mattel was marketing its Disney toys as coming with the special offer of a book. An advertisement in the Australian women’s magazine New Idea spoke of the “magic” of Disney toys and how they would “enchant your child” but made even grander claims of the accompanying book: “It’s valued at $9.95…but you can’t put a price on the bond between you and your child when you read one of these Disney classic tales together.” The pressures of modern-day life are such that parents sometimes feel guilty that they cannot spend enough time with their children or do not know how to play with them or have little interest in doing so, in which case substitutional love can be a strong marketing claim to parents by toys. Among the major features of modern toys and their part in the relationship between parents and children, Brian Sutton-Smith pinpointed a contradiction (115, 127). Parents give their children toys to bond with them but also to simultaneously facilitate separation: “I give you this toy for you to play with…but now go away and play with it by yourself.” Toys not only serve the contradiction but also may offer reconciliation, pitching at a niche seeking substitutional love. Mattel was explicit about this with its promotion of the Heart Family, a set of dolls that on one hand stressed the importance of the traditional nuclear family while, on the other, offered carers a chance to opt out of the burdens of such rigid family organization (Langer). In a booklet entitled “Dear Mum and Dad, will you give me five minutes of your time?” distributed in Australia, Mattel claimed that major research had found that parents did not spend enough time with children and that children felt sad and angry about this. But there was a solution at hand: the purchase of the Heart Family, which incidentally came with an enormous range of accessories, each capable of chipping away at parental guilt though perhaps never quite assuaging it, for there always seemed to be one more accessory on the way. Most notable of these was the large, elegant, two-storeyed dollhouse, Loving Home. The dolls, their dollhouse, musical nursery, playground and umpteen other accessories were, it was insinuated by the Mattel booklet, a way of purchasing “values we all believe in. Sharing. Caring. Loving. Togetherness”. It seemed that the range of commodities could stand in for parents. More recently, Fisher-Price, now part of the Mattel group, has brought out a similar toy line, Loving Family, which hints even more strongly at links between family security and material possessions. Among Loving Family’s accessories are a multi-room family house with attached stable, a beach house, country home, townhouse, beauty salon and much more. While we cannot be sure that these suggested links and parental guilt in the absence of multiple toy gifts take root, toy companies, market analysts, toy advertising agencies and psychiatrists have noted trends that suggest they generally do. They have noted the impact on toy sales thought to be associated with “the high number of children with guilt-ridden working mothers, or from broken homes where parents are trying to buy their offspring’s affections” (McKee). Sometimes parents are keen to ensure the love and affection of playmates for their children. Toy companies also offer this type of substitutional love. Knickerbocker says of its wares: “Toys that love you back,” while among Galoob’s dolls is Mandi, My Favorite Friend. But what a gloomy picture of human companionship is painted by Phebe Bears’ slogan: “When there’s no one else to trust.” Space permits only the briefest comments on either obligatory love or romantic love; the key factor here is that both are strongly gendered. Boys need not concern themselves with either variety but girls’ toys abound which play a socialising role in respect to each. Toys contributing to a concept of love as obligation train girls for a motherhood role that ensures they will be emotionally as well as physically equipped. Kenner doll Baby Needs Me is only one of many such toys. The box of Baby Chris gift set claims the doll “needs your love and care” while Hush Little Baby “responds to your loving care” and “loves to be fed”. Matchbox’s Chubbles is claimed to “live on love”. If the weight of these obligations seems daunting to a girl, the Barbie doll genre offers her a carrot, suggesting that girls grow into women who are the recipients of love from men. A closer look reveals narcissism is surely the strongest type of love promoted by Barbie, but that is not explicit. Barbies such as Dream Date Barbie, Enchanted Evening Barbie and the numerous Barbie brides – even though Barbie is claimed to have never married – promote a straightforward and romanticised view of heterosexual relationships. In conclusion, each toy makes its own grab for attention, often promising love or one of its components, but usually working within a framework of short-term gratification, infatuation, obsession, the yearn to possess and elicitation of guilt – mostly unhealthy ingredients for relationships. While it may be hard to decide what love is, most would agree that, if it ideally has some sense of community responsibility and reciprocity about it, then the definitions offered by these toys fall short of the mark. Works Cited Blyskal, Jeff and Marie. “Media Doll – Born in a Cabbage Patch and Reared by a PR Man” The Quill, 73, November 1985: 32. du Cille, Ann. “Dyes and Dolls: Multicultural Barbie and the Merchandising of Difference” Differences 6(1) Spring 1994: 46-68. Haug, Wolfgang Fritz. Commodity Aesthetics: Ideology and Culture. New York: International General, 1987. Jacob, James E., Paul Rodenhauser and Ronald J. Markert. “The Benign Exploitation of Human Emotions: Adult Women and the Marketing of Cabbage Patch Kids” Journal of American Culture 10, Fall 1987: 61-71. Kline, Stephen, and Debra Pentecost, “The Characterization of Play: Marketing Children’s Toys” Play and Culture, 3(3), 1990: 235-255. Kline, Stephen, Out of the Garden: Toys, TV, and Children’s Culture in the Age of Marketing. London: Verso, 1993. Kunkel, Dale. “From a Raised Eyebrow to a Turned Back: The FCC and Children’s Product-Related Programming” Journal of Communication 38(4) Autumn 1988: 90-108. Langer, Beryl. “Commoditoys: Marketing Childhood” Arena no. 87, 1989: 29-37. McKee, Victoria. “All Stressed Out and Ready to Play” The Times (London), 19 December 1990: 17. Postman, Neil. The Disappearance of Childhood. New York: Dell, 1982. Stern, Sydney Ladensohn and Ted Schoenhaus. Toyland: The High-Stakes Game of the Toy Industry. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1990. Sutton-Smith, Brian. Toys As Culture. New York: Garden Press, 1986. Varney, Wendy. “The Briar Around the Strawberry Patch: Toys, Women and Food” Women’s Studies International Forum no. 19, June 1996: 267-276. Varney, Wendy. “Of Men and Machines: Images of Masculinity in the Toybox” Feminist Studies 28(1) Spring 2002: 153-174. Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Varney, Wendy. "Love in Toytown" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.6 (2002). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/loveintotytown.php>. APA Style Varney, W., (2002, Nov 20). Love in Toytown. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 5,(6). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/loveintotytown.html

Michael Bond, Paddington creator passesIt is with sadness that we note the passing of Michael Bond, British author and creator of the Paddington Bear children’s books. Bond’s first book A Bear Called Paddington was first published in 1958 and told the story of a bear found at Paddington Station in London, that is then adopted by the Brown family. Paddington Brown, as he is later named, loves marmalade sandwiches, and always manages to get into some type of trouble despite best intentions. Paddington’s adventures continue to delight children around the world, and are representative of middle class life in London.Bond’s first book was followed by over twenty Paddington books, which have sold 35 million copies worldwide, and are translated into 41 languages. In 1972 a lady by the name of Shirley Clarkson made her children a stuffed Paddington toy that was soon in demand by other children. Clarkson eventually obtained a license to manufacture the toys and Paddington stuffed bears became the must-have souvenir when returning home from London. A number of television programs were produced over the decades, the first in 1975. In 2014 StudioCanal produced a film called Paddington, and another film about the lovable bear is being planned for late 2017. Bond’s Bear Called Paddington, with his little suitcase, button-down coat, hat, and Wellington boots has become a British icon known the world around. Bond, who wrote over 150 books in his lifetime, received the OBE in 1997 and the CBE in 2015. He passed away at the age of 91 on June 27, 2017.For further reading, both the New York TImes and The Guardian have obituary columns for Michael Bond. The paddington.com website also has a great resource of historical and biographical information on the Paddington books and Michael Bond.Canadian Children’s Book Centre Best Books for Kids Submissions The Canadian Children’s Book Centre (CCBC) is now accepting submissions for the spring 2018 edition of Best Books for Kids & Teens (BBKT), the CCBC’s semi-annual selection guide to the best Canadian children’s books, magazines, audio and video, which will be released in May 2018. SUBMISSION DEADLINE: October 6, 2017 For more information visit the CCBC website.

Introduction Where children’s television once ruled supreme as a vehicle for sales of kids’ brands, the marketing of children’s toys now often hinges on having the right social media influencer, many of them children themselves (Verdon). As Forbes reported in 2021, the pandemic saw an increase in children spending more time online, many following their favourite influencers on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. The importance of tapping into partnering with the right influencer grew, as did sales in toys for children isolated at home. We detail, through a case study approach and visual narrative analysis of two Australian influencer siblings’ Instagram accounts, the nature of toy marketing to children in 2023. Findings point to the continued gendered nature of toys and the concurrent promotion of aspirational adult ‘toys’ (for example, cars, high-end cosmetics) and leisure pursuits that blur the line between what we considered to be children’s playthings and adult objects of desire. To Market, to Market Toys are a huge business worldwide. In 2021, the global toys market was projected to grow from $141.08 billion to $230.64 billion by 2028. During COVID-19, toy sales increased (Fortune Business Insights). The rise of the Internet alongside media and digital technologies has given toy marketers new opportunities to reach children directly, as well as producing new forms of digitally enabled play, with marketers potentially having access to children 24/7, way beyond the previous limits of children’s programming on television (Hains and Jennings). Children’s digital content has also extended to digital games alongside digital devices and Internet-connected toys. Children’s personal tablet ownership rose from less than 1 per cent in 2011 to 42 per cent in 2017 (Rideout), and continues to grow. Children’s value for brands and marketers has increased over time (Cunningham). The nexus between physical toys and the entertainment industry has grown stronger, first with the Disney company and then with the stand-out success of the Star Wars franchise (now owned by Disney) from the late 1970s (Hains and Jennings). The concept of transmedia storytelling and selling, with toys as the vehicle for children to play out the stories they saw on television, in comics, books, movies, and online, proved to be a lucrative one for the entertainment company franchises and the toy manufacturers (Bainbridge). All major toy brands now recognise the power of linking toy brands and entertaining transmedia children’s texts, including online content, with Disney, LEGO and Barbie being obvious examples. Gender and Toys: Boys and Girls Come Out to Play Alongside the growth of the children’s market, the gendering of children’s toys has also continued and increased, with concerns that traditional gender roles are still strongly promoted via children’s toys (Fine and Rush). Research shows that girls’ toys are socialising them for caring roles, shopping, and concern with beauty, while toys aimed at boys (including transportation and construction toys, action figures, and weapons) may promote physicality, aggression, construction, and action (Fine and Rush). As Blakemore and Center (632) suggested, then, if children learn from toy-play “by playing with strongly stereotyped toys, girls can be expected to learn that appearance and attractiveness are central to their worth, and that nurturance and domestic skills are important to be developed. Boys can be expected to learn that aggression, violence, and competition are fun, and that their toys are exciting and risky”. Recently there has been some pushback by consumers, and some toy brands have responded, with LEGO committing to less gendered toy marketing (Russell). YouTube: The World’s Most Popular Babysitter? One business executive has described YouTube as the most popular babysitter in the world (Capitalism.com). The use of children as influencers on YouTube to market toys through toy review videos is now a common practice (Feller and Burroughs; De Veirman et al.). These ‘reviews’ are not critical in the traditional sense of reviews in an institutional or legacy media context. Instead, the genre is a mash-up, which blurs the lines between three major genres: review, branded content, and entertainment (Jaakkola). Concerns have been raised about advertising disguised as entertainment for children, and calls have been made for nuanced regulatory approaches (Craig and Cunningham). The most popular toy review channels have millions of subscribers, and their hosts constitute some of YouTube’s top earners (Hunting). Toy review videos have become an important force in children’s media – in terms of economics, culture, and for brands (Hunting). Concurrently, surprise toys have risen as a popular type of toy, thanks in part to the popularity of the unboxing toy review genre (Nicoll and Nansen). Ryan’s World is probably the best-known in this genre, with conservative estimates putting 10-year-old Ryan Kanji’s family earnings at $25 million annually (Kang). Ryan’s World, formerly Ryan’s Toy Review, now has 10 YouTube channels and the star has his own show on Nic Junior as well as across other media, including books and video games (Capitalism.com). Marsh, through her case study of one child, showed the way children interact with online content, including unboxing videos, as ‘cyberflaneurs’. YouTube is the medium of choice for most children (now more so than television; Auxier et al.). However, Instagram is also a site where a significant number of children and teens spend time. Australian data from the e-Safety Commission in 2018 showed that while YouTube was the most popular platform, with 80 per cent of children 8-12 and 86 per cent of teens using the site, 24 per cent of children used Instagram, and 70 per cent of teens 13-17 (e-Safety Commissioner). Given the rise in social media, phone, and tablet use in the last five years, including among younger children, these statistics are now likely to be higher. A report from US-based Business Insider in 2021 stated that 40 per cent of children under 13 already use Instagram (Canales). This is despite the platform ostensibly only being for people aged 13 and over. Ofcom (the UK’s regulator for communications services) has discussed the rise of ‘Tik-Tots’ – young children defying age restrictions to be on social media – and the increase of young people consuming rather than sharing on social media (Ofcom). Insta-Kidfluencers on the Rise Marketers are now tapping into the selling power of children as social media influencers (or kidfluencers) to promote children’s toys, and in some cases, parents are happy to act as their children’s agents and managers for these pint-size prosumers. Abidin ("Micromicrocelebrity") was the first to discuss what she termed ‘micro-microcelebrities’, children of social media influencers (usually mothers) who have become, through their parents’ mediation, paid social media influencers themselves, often through Instagram. As Abidin noted: “their digital presence is deliberately commercial, framed and staged by Influencer mothers in order to maximize their advertorial potential, and are often postured to market even non-baby/parenting products such as fast food and vehicles”. Since that time, and with children now a growing audience on Instagram, some micro-microcelebrities have begun to promote toys alongside other brands which appeal to both children and adults. While initially these human ‘brand extensions’ of their mothers (Archer) appealed to adults, their sponsored content has evolved as they have aged, and their audience has grown and broadened to include children. Given the rise of Instagram as a site for the marketing of toys to children, through children themselves as social media influencers, and the lack of academic research on this phenomenon, our research looks at a case study of prominent child social media influencers on Instagram in Australia, who are managed by their mother, and who regularly promote toys. Within the case study, visual narrative analysis is used, to analyse the Instagram accounts of two high-profile child social media influencers, eleven-year-old Australian Pixie Curtis and her eight-year-old brother, Hunter Curtis, both of whom are managed by their entrepreneur and ‘PR queen’ mother, Roxy Jacenko. We analysed the posts from each child from March to July 2022 inclusive. Posts were recorded in a spreadsheet, with the content described, hashtags or handles recorded, and any brand or toy mentions noted. We used related media reports to supplement the analysis. We have considered ethical implications of our research and have made the decision to identify both children, as their accounts are public, with large follower numbers, promote commercial interests, and have the blue Instagram ‘tick’ that identifies their accounts as verified and ‘celebrity’ or brand accounts, and the children are regularly featured in mainstream media. The children’s mother, Jacenko, often discusses the children on television and has discussed using Pixie’s parties as events to gain publicity for the toy business. We have followed the lead of Abidin and Leaver, considered experts in the field, who have identified children and families in ethnographic research when the children or families have large numbers of followers (see Abidin, "#Familygoals"; Leaver and Abidin). We do acknowledge that other researchers have chosen not to identify influencer children (e.g., Ågren) with smaller numbers of followers. The research questions are as follows: RQ1: What are the toys featured on the two social media influencer children’s sites? RQ2: Are the toys traditionally gendered and if so, what are the main gender-based toys? RQ3: Do the children promote products that are traditionally aimed at adults? If so, how are these ‘toys’ presented, and what are they? Analysis The two child influencers and toy promoters, sister and brother Pixie (11) and Hunter (8) Curtis, are the children of celebrity, entrepreneur and public relations ‘maven’, Roxy Jacenko. Jacenko’s first business was a public relations firm, Sweaty Betty, one she ran successfully but has recently closed to focus on her influencer talent agency business, the Ministry of Talent, and the two businesses related to her children, Pixie’s Pix (an online toy store named after her daughter) and Pixie’s Bows, a line of fashion bows aimed at girls (Madigan). Pixie Curtis grew up with her own Instagram account, with her first Instagram post on 18 June 2013, before turning two, and featuring a promotion of an online subscription service for toys, with the hashtag #babblebox. At time of writing, Pixie has 120,000 Instagram followers; her ‘bio’ describes her account as ‘shopping and retail’ and as managed by Jacenko. Pixie is also described as the ‘founder of Pixie’s Pix Toy Store’. Her brother Hunter’s account began on 6 May 2015, with the first post to celebrate his first birthday. Hunter’s page has 20,000 followers with his profile stating that it is managed by his mother and her talent and influencer agency. RQ1: What are the toys featured on the two children’s Instagram sites? The two children feature toy promotions regularly, mostly from Pixie’s online toy shop, with the site tagged @pixiespixonline. These toys are often demonstrated by Pixie and Hunter in short video format, following the now-established genre of the toy unboxing or toy review. Toys that are shown on Pixie’s site (tagged to her toy store) include air-clay (clay designed to be used to create clay sculptures); a Scruff-a-Luv soft toy that mimics a rescue pet that needs to be bathed in water, dried, and groomed to become a ‘lovable’ soft toy pet; toy slime; kinetic sand; Hatchimals (flying fairy/pixie dolls that come out of plastic eggs); LOL OMG dolls and Mermaze (both with accentuated female/made up features). LOL OMG (short for Outrageous Millennial Girls) are described as “fierce, fashionable, fabulous” and their name taps into common language used to communicate while texting. Mermaze are also fashion and hair styling dolls, with a mermaid’s tail that changes colour in water. While predominantly promoting toys on Pixie’s Pix, Pixie posts promotions of other items on her Website aimed at children. This includes practical items such as lunch boxes, but also beauty products including a skin care headband and scented body scrubs. Toys shown on Hunter’s Instagram site are often promotions of his sister’s toy store offerings, but generally fall into the traditional ‘boys’ toys’ categories. The posts that tag the Pixie’s Pix store feature photos or video demonstrations by Hunter of toys, including trucks, slime, ‘Splat balls’ (squish balls), Pokémon cards, Zuru toys’ ‘Smashers’ (dinosaur eggs that are smashed to reveal a dinosaur toy), a Bubblegum simulator for Roblox (a social media platform and game), Needoh Stickums, water bombs, and Hot Wheels. RQ2: Are the toys traditionally gendered and if so, what are the main gender-based toys? Although both children promote gender-neutral sensory toys such as slime and splat balls, they do promote strongly gendered toys from Pixie’s Pix. Hunter also promotes gendered toys that are not tagged to Pixie’s Pix, including Jurassic World dinosaur toys (tying into the film release). One post by Hunter features a (paid) cross-promotion of PlayStation 5 themed Donut King donuts (with a competition to win a PlayStation 5 by buying the donuts). In contrast, Pixie posts a paid promotion of a high-tea event to promote My Little Ponies. Hunter’s posts of toys and leisure items that do not tag Pixie’s toyshop include him on a go-kart, buying rugby gear, and with an ‘airtasker’ (paid assistant) helping him sort his Nerf gun collection. There are posts of both children playing and doing ‘regular’ children’s activities, including sport (Pixie plays netball, Hunter rugby), with their dog, ice-skating, and swimming (albeit often at expensive resorts), while Hunter and Pixie both wear, unbox, and tag some high-end children’s clothes brands such as Balmain and promote department store Myer. RQ3: Do the children promote products that are traditionally aimed at adults? If so, how are these ‘toys’ presented, and what are they? The Cambridge dictionary provides the following two definitions of toys, with one showing that ‘toys’ may also be considered as objects of pleasure for adults. A toy is “an object for children to play with” while it can also be “an object that is used by an adult for pleasure rather than for serious use”. The very meaning of the word toys shows the crossover between the adult and children’s world. The more ‘adult’ products promoted by Pixie are highly gendered, with expensive bags, clothes, make-up, and skin care regularly featured on her account. These are arguably toys but also teen or adult objects of aspiration, with Pixie’s collection of handbags featured and the brand tagged. The bag collection includes brightly coloured bags by Australian designer Poppy Lissiman. Other female-focussed brands include a hairdryer brand, with photos and videos posted of Pixie ‘playing’ at dressing up and ‘getting ready’, using skincare, make-up, and hair products. These toys cater to age demographics older than Pixie. Hunter is pictured in posts on a jet-ski, and in others with a mobile and tablet, or washing a Tesla car and with a helicopter. The gendered tropes of girls being concerned with their appearance, and boys interested in vehicles, action, and competitive (video) games appear to be borne out in the posts from the two children. Discussion and Conclusion As an entrepreneur, Jacenko has capitalised on her daughter’s and son’s personal brands that she has co-created by launching and promoting a toyshop named after her daughter, following the success of her children’s promotion of toys for other companies and Pixie’s successful hairbow line. The toy shop arose out of Pixie promoting sales of fidget spinners during the pandemic lockdowns where toy sales rose sharply across the world. The children are also now on TikTok, and while they have a toy review channel on YouTube it has not been posted on for three years. Therefore, it is safe to assume that Instagram is one of the main channels for the children to promote the toyshop. In an online newspaper article describing the success of Pixie’s toyshop and the purchase of an expensive Mercedes car, Jacenko said that the children work hard, and the car was their “reward” (Scanlan). “The help both her brother and her [Pixie] give me on the buying (every night we work on new style selections and argue over it), the packing, the restocking, goes well beyond their years”, Jacenko is quoted as saying. “We’ve made a pact, we must keep going, work harder. Next, it’s a Rolls Royce.” Analysis of the children’s Instagram pages shows highly gendered promotion of toys. The children also promote a variety of high-end, aspirational tween, teen, and adult ‘toys’, including clothes, make-up, and skincare (Pixie) and expensive cars (Hunter and Pixie). Gender stereotyping has been found in adult influencer content (see, for example, Jorge et al.) and researchers have also pointed to sexualisation of young girl influencers on Instagram (Llovet et al.). Our research potentially echoes these findings. Posts from the children regularly include aspirational commodities that blur the lines between adult and child items of desire. Concerns have been raised in other academic articles (and in government reports) regarding the possible exploitation of children’s labour by parents and marketers to promote brands, including toys, on social media (see, for example, Ågren; De Veirman et al.; House of Commons; Masterson). The French government is believed to be the only government to have moved to regulate regarding the labour of children as social media influencers, and the same government at time of writing was debating laws to enshrine children’s right to privacy on social media, to stop the practice of ‘sharenting’ or parents sharing their children’s images and other content on social media without their children’s consent (Rieffel). Mainstream media including Teen Vogue (Fortesa), and some influencers themselves, have also started to raise issues relevant to ‘kidfluencers’. In the state of Utah, USA, the government has introduced laws to stop children under 18 having access to social media without parents’ consent, although some view this as potentially having some negative impacts (Singer). The ethics and impact of toy advertorials on children by social media influencers, with little or no disclosure of the posts being advertisements, have also been discussed elsewhere (see, for example, House of Commons; Jaakkola), with Rahali and Livingstone offering suggestions aimed key stakeholders. It has been found that beyond the marketing of toys and adult ‘luxuries’ to kids, other products that potentially harm children (for example, junk food and e-cigarettes) are also commonly seen in sponsored content on Instagram and YouTube aimed at children (Fleming‐Milici, Phaneuf, and Harris; Smith et al.). Indeed, it could be argued that e-cigarettes have been positioned as playthings and are appealing to children. While we may bemoan the loss of innocence of children, with the children in this analysis posed by their entrepreneurial mother as purveyors of material goods including toys, it is useful to remember that perhaps it has always been a conundrum, given the purpose of toy marketing is to make commercial sales. Children’s toys have always reflected and shaped society’s culture, often with surprisingly sinister and adult overtones, including the origins of Barbie as a male ‘sex’ toy (Bainbridge) and the blatant promotion of guns and other weapons to boys (for example the famous Mattel ‘burp’ gun of the 50s and 60s), through advertising and sponsorship of television (Hains and Jennings). Recently, fashion house Balenciaga promoted its range of adult bags using children as models via Instagram – the bags are teddy bears dressed in bondage outfits and the marketing stunt caused considerable backlash, with the sexually dressed bears and use of children raising outrage (Deguara). Were these teddy bags framed as children’s toys for adults or adult toys for children? The line was blurred. This research has limitations as it is focussed on a case study in one country (but with global reach through Instagram). However, the current analysis is believed to be one of the first to focus on children’s promotion of toys through Instagram, by two children’s influencers, a relatively new marketing approach aimed at children. As the article was being finalised, the children’s mother announced that as Pixie was transitioning into high school and wanted to focus on her studies rather than running a business, the toy business would conclude but Pixie’s Bows would continue (Madigan). In the UK, recent research by Livingstone et al. for the Digital Futures Commission potentially offers a way forward related to this phenomenon, when viewed alongside the analysis of our case study. Their final report (following research with children) suggests a Playful by Design Tool that would be useful for designers and brands, but also children, parents, regulators, and other stakeholders. Principles such as adopting ethical commercial models, being age-appropriate and ensuring safety, make sense when applied to kidfluencers and those that stand to benefit from their playbour. It appears that governments, society, some academics, and the media are starting to question the current generally unrestricted frameworks related to social media in general (see, for example, the ACCC’s ongoing enquiry) and toy and other marketing by kids to kids on social media specifically (House of Commons). We argue that more frameworks, and potentially laws, are required in this mostly unregulated space. Through our case study we have highlighted key areas of concern on one of the world’s most popular platforms for children and teens, including privacy issues, commodification, and gendered and ‘stealth’ marketing of toys through ‘advertorials’. We also acknowledge that children do gain playful and social benefits and entertainment from seeing influencers online. Given that it has been shown that gendered marketing of toys (and increased focus on appearance for girls through Instagram) could be potentially harmful to children’s self-esteem, and with related concerns on the continued commodification of childhood, further research is also needed to discover the responses and views of children to these advertorials masquerading as cute content. References Abidin, Crystal. "Micromicrocelebrity: Branding Babies on the Internet." M/C Journal 18.5 (2015). <https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1022>. ———. "#Familygoals: Family Influencers, Calibrated Amateurism, and Justifying Young Digital Labor." 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The Guardian 11 Oct. 2021. <https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/oct/11/lego-to-remove-gender-bias-after-survey-shows-impact-on-children-stereotypes>. Scanlan, Rebekah. "Roxy Jacenko Buys Daughter, 9, $270,000 Car as Toy Business Booms." News.com.au 3 Aug. 2021. <https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/roxy-jacenko-buys-daughter-9-270000-car-as-toy-business-booms/news-story/14bd181e6a24235f85276f16596d359a>. Singer, Natasha. "A Sweeping Plan to Protect Kids from Social Media." New York Times The Daily Podcast. Ed. Michael Barbaro. 2023. <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/27/podcasts/the-daily/social-media-instagram-tiktok-utah-ban.html>. Smith, Marissa J., et al. "User-Generated Content and Influencer Marketing Involving E-Cigarettes on Social Media: A Scoping Review and Content Analysis of YouTube and Instagram." BMC Public Health 23.1 (2023): 530. Verdon, Joan. "Santa’s Top Toy Sellers This Year Are Influencers." Forbes 14 Nov. 2021. <https://www.forbes.com/sites/joanverdon/2021/11/14/santas-top-toy-sellers-this-year-are-influencers/?sh=67621a7b1235>.

Engagement in any capacity with mainstream media since mid-2001 has meant immersion in the cross-platform, multimedia phenomenon of Harry Potter: Muggle outcast; boy wizard; corporate franchise. Consumers even casually perusing contemporary popular culture could be forgiven for suspecting they have entered a MÃbius loop in which Harry Potter-related media products and merchandise are ubiquitous: books; magazine cover stories; newspaper articles; websites; television specials; hastily assembled author biographies; advertisements on broadcast and pay television; children's merchandising; and theme park attractions. Each of these media commodities has been anchored in and cross-promoted by America Online-Time Warner's (AOL-TW) first instalment in a projected seven-film sequence—Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.1 The marketing campaign has gradually escalated in the three years elapsing between AOL-TW subsidiary Warner Bros' purchase from J.K. Rowling of the film and merchandising rights to the first two Harry Potter books, and the November 2001 world premiere of the film (Sherber 55). As current AOL-TW CEO Richard Parsons accurately forecast, "You're not going to be able to go anywhere without knowing about it. This could be a bigger franchise than Star Wars" (Auletta 50). Yet, AOL-TW's promotional strategy did not limit itself to creating mere awareness of the film's release. Rather, its tactic was to create an all-encompassing environment structured around the immense value of the Harry Potter brand—a "brand cocoon" which consumers do not so much enter and exit as choose to exist within (Klein 2002). In twenty-first-century mass marketing, the art is to target affluent consumers willing to direct their informational, entertainment, and consumption practices increasingly within the "walled garden" of a single conglomerate's content offerings (Auletta 55). Such an idealised modern consumer avidly samples the diversified product range of the parent conglomerate, but does so specifically by consuming multiple products derived from essentially the same content reservoir. Provided a match between consumer desire and brand can be achieved with sufficient accuracy and demographic breadth, the commercial returns are obvious: branded consumers pay multiple times for only marginally differentiated products. The Brand-Conglomerate Nexus Recyclable content has always been embraced by media industries, as cultural commodities such as early films of stage variety acts, Hollywood studio-era literary adaptations, and movie soundtrack LPs attest. For much of the twentieth century, the governing dynamic of content recycling was sequential, in that a content package (be it a novel, stage production or film) would succeed in its home medium and then, depending upon its success and potential for translation across formats, could be repackaged in a subsequent medium. Successful content repackaging may re-energise demand for earlier formatting of the same content (as film adaptations of literary bestsellers reliably increase sales of the originating novel). Yet the cultural industries providing risk capital to back content repackaging formerly required solid evidence that content had achieved immense success in its first medium before contemplating reformulations into new media. The cultural industries radically restructured in the last decades of the twentieth century to produce the multi-format phenomenon of which Harry Potter is the current apotheosis: multiple product lines in numerous corporate divisions are promoted simultaneously, the synchronicity of product release being crucial to the success of the franchise as a whole. The release of individual products may be staggered, but the goal is for products to be available simultaneously so that they work in aggregate to drive consumer awareness of the umbrella brand. Such streaming of content across parallel media formats is in many ways the logical culmination of broader late-twentieth-century developments. Digital technology has functionally integrated what were once discrete media operating platforms, and major media conglomerates have acquired subsidiaries in virtually all media formats on a global scale. Nevertheless, it remains true that the commercial risks inherent in producing, distributing and promoting a cross-format media phenomenon are vastly greater than the formerly dominant sequential approach, massively escalating financial losses should the elusive consumer-brand fit fail to materialise. A key to media corporations' seemingly quixotic willingness to expose themselves to such risk is perhaps best provided by Michael Harkavy, Warner Bros' vice-president of worldwide licensing, in his comments on Warner Music Group's soundtrack for the first Harry Potter film: It will be music for the child in us all, something we hope to take around the world that will take us to the next level of synergy between consumer products, the [AOL-TW cable channel] Cartoon Network, our music, film, and home video groups—building a longtime franchise for Harry as a team effort. (Traiman 51) The relationship between AOL-TW and the superbrand Harry Potter is essentially symbiotic. AOL-TW, as the world's largest media conglomerate, has the resources to exploit fully economies of scale in production and distribution of products in the vast Harry Potter franchise. Similarly, AOL-TW is pre-eminently placed to exploit the economies of scope afforded by its substantial holdings in every form of content delivery, allowing cross-subsidisation of the various divisions and, crucially, cross-promotion of the Harry Potter brand in an endless web of corporate self-referentiality. Yet it is less frequently acknowledged that AOL-TW needs the Harry Potter brand as much as the global commercialisation of Harry Potter requires AOL-TW. The conglomerate seeks a commercially protean megabrand capable of streaming across all its media formats to drive operating synergies between what have historically been distinct commercial divisions ("Welcome"; Pulley; Auletta 55). In light of AOL-TW's record US$54.2b losses in the first quarter of 2002, the long-term viability of the Harry Potter franchise is, if anything, still more crucial to the conglomerate's health than was envisaged at the time of its dot.com-fuelled January 2000 merger (Goldberg 23; "AOL" 35). AOL-TW's Richard Parsons conceptualises Harry Potter specifically as an asset "driving synergy both ways", neatly encapsulating the symbiotic interdependence between AOL-TW and its star franchise: "we use the different platforms to drive the movie, and the movie to drive business across the platforms" ("Harry Potter" 61). Characteristics of the Harry Potter Brand AOL-TW's enthusiasm to mesh its corporate identity with the Harry Potter brand stems in the first instance from demonstrated consumer loyalty to the Harry Potter character: J.K. Rowling's four books have sold in excess of 100m copies in 47 countries and have been translated into 47 languages.2 In addition, the brand has shown a promising tendency towards demographic bracket-creep, attracting loyal adult readers in sufficient numbers to prompt UK publisher Bloomsbury to diversify into adult-targeted editions. As alluring for AOL-TW as this synchronic brand growth is, the real goldmine inheres in the brand's potential for diachronic growth. From her first outlines of the concept, Rowling conceived of the Potter story as a seven-part series, which from a marketing perspective ensures the broadscale re-promotion of the Harry Potter brand on an almost annual basis throughout the current decade. This moreover assists re-release of the first film on an approximately five-year basis to new audiences previously too young to fall within its demographic catchment—the exact strategy of "classic" rebranding which has underwritten rival studio Disney's fortunes.3 Complementing this brand extension is the potential to grow child consumers through the brand as Harry Potter sequels are produced. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone director Chris Columbus spruiks enthusiastically that "the beauty of making these books into films is that with each one, Harry is a year older, so [child actor] Daniel [Radcliffe] can remain Harry as long as we keep making them" (Manelis 111). Such comments suggest the benefits of luring child consumers through the brand as they mature, harnessing their intense loyalty to the child cast and, through the cast, to the brand itself. The over-riding need to be everything to everyone—exciting to new consumers entering the brand for the first time, comfortingly familiar to already seasoned consumers returning for a repeat hit—helps explain the retro-futuristic feel of the first film's production design. Part 1950s suburban Hitchcock, Part Dickensian London, part Cluny-tapestry medievalism, part public school high-Victorianism, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone strives for a commercially serviceable timelessness, in so doing reinforcing just how very twenty-first-century its conception actually is. In franchise terms, this conscious drive towards retro-futurism fuels Harry Potter's "toyetic potential" (Siegel, "Toys" 19). The ease with which the books' complex plots and mise-en-scene lend themselves to subsidiary rights sales and licensed merchandising in part explains Harry Potter's appeal to commercial media. AOL-TW executives in their public comments have consistently stayed on-message in emphasising "magic" as the brand's key aspirational characteristic, and certainly scenes such as the arrival at Hogwarts, the Quidditch match, the hatching of Hagrid's dragon and the final hunt through the school's dungeons serve as brilliant advertisements for AOL-TW's visual effects divisions. Yet the film exploits many of these "magic" scenes to introduce key tropes of its merchandising programme—Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, chocolate frogs, Hogwarts house colours, the sorting hat, Scabbers the rat, Hedwig, the Remembrall—such that it resembles a series of home shopping advertisements with unusually high production values. It is this railroading of the film's narrative into opportunities for consumerist display which leads film critic Cynthia Fuchs to dub the Diagon Alley shopping scene "the film's cagiest moment, at once a familiar activity for school kid viewers and an apt metaphor for what this movie is all about—consumption, of everything in sight." More telling than the normalising of shopping as filmic activity in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the eclipse of the book's checks on commodity fetishism: its very British sensitivity to class snubs for the large and impecunious Weasley family; the puzzled contempt Hogwarts initiates display for Muggle money; the gentle ribbing at children's obsession with branded sports goods. The casual browser in the Warner Bros store confronted with a plastic, light-up version of the Nimbus 2000 Quidditch broomstick understands that even the most avid authorial commitment to delimiting spin-off merchandise can try the media conglomerate's hand only so far. Constructing the Harry Potter Franchise The film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone constitutes the indispensable brand anchor for AOL-TW's intricate publicity and sales strategy around Harry Potter. Because content recycling within global media conglomerates is increasingly lead by film studio divisions, the opening weekend box office taking for a brand-anchoring film is crucial to the success of the broader franchise and, by extension, to the corporation as a whole. Critic Thomas Schatz's observation that the film's opening serves as "the "launch site" for its franchise development, establishing its value in all other media markets" (83) highlights the precariousness of such multi-party financial investment all hinging upon first weekend takings. The fact that Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone broke (then standing) box office records with its 16 November 2001 three-day weekend openings in the US and the UK, garnering US$93.2m and GBP16m respectively, constituted the crucial first stage in AOL-TW's brand strategy (Collins 9; Fierman and Jensen 26). But it formed only an initial phase, as subsequent content recycling and cross-promotion was then structured to radiate outwards from this commercial epicentre. Three categories of recycled AOL-TW Harry Potter content are discernible, although they are frequently overlapping and not necessarily sequential. The first category, most closely tied to the film itself, are instances of reused digital content, specifically in the advance publicity trailer viewable on the official website, and downloads of movie clips, film stills and music samples from the film and its soundtrack.4 Secondly, at one remove from the film itself, is AOL-TW's licensing of film "characters, names and related indicia" to secondary manufacturers, creating tie-in merchandise designed to cross-promote the Harry Potter brand and stoke consumer investment (both emotional and financial) in the phenomenon.5 This campaign phase was itself tactically designed with two waves of merchandising release: a September 2000 launch of book-related merchandise (with no use of film-related Harry Potter indicia permitted); and a second, better selling February 2001 release of ancillary products sporting Harry Potter film logos and visual branding which coincided with and reinforced the marketing push specifically around the film's forthcoming release (Sherber 55; Siegel, "From Hype" 24; Lyman and Barnes C1; Martin 5). Finally, and most crucial to the long-term strategy of the parent conglomerate, Harry Potter branding was used to drive consumer take up of AOL-TW products not generally associated with the Harry Potter brand, as a means of luring consumers out of their established technological or informational comfort zones. Hence, the official Harry Potter website is laced with far from accidental offers to trial Internet service provider AOL; TimeWarner magazines Entertainment Weekly, People, and Time ran extensive taster stories about the film and its loyal fan culture (Jensen 56-57; Fierman and Jensen 26-28; "Magic Kingdom" 132-36; Corliss 136; Dickinson 115); AOL-TW's Moviefone bookings service advertised pre-release Harry Potter tickets on its website; and Warner Bros Movie World theme park on the Gold Coast in Australia heavily promoted its Harry Potter Movie Magic Experience. Investment in a content brand on the scale of AOL-TW's outlay of US$1.4m for Harry Potter must not only drive substantial business across every platform of the converged media conglomerate by providing premium content (Grover 66). It must, crucially for the long run, also drive take up and on-going subscriptions to the delivery services owned by the parent corporation. Energising such all-encompassing strategising is the corporate nirvana of seamless synergy: between content and distribution; between the Harry Potter and AOL-TW brands; between conglomerate and consumer. Notes 1. The film, like the first of J.K. Rowling's books, is titled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the "metaphysics-averse" US ("Harry Potter" 61). 2. Publishing statistics sourced from Horn and Jones (59), Manelis (110) and Bloomsbury Publishing's Harry Potter website: http://www.bloomsburymagazine.com/harryp.... 3. Interestingly, Disney tangentially acknowledged the extent to which AOL-TW has appropriated Disney's own content recycling strategies. In a film trailer for the Pixar/Disney animated collaboration Monsters, Inc. which screened in Australia and the US before Harry Potter sessions, two monsters play a game of charades to which the answer is transparently "Harry Potter." In the way of such homages from one media giant to another, it nevertheless subtly directs the audience to the Disney product screening in an adjacent cinema. 4. The official Harry Potter film website is http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com. The official site for the soundtrack to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone is: http://www.harrypottersoundtrack.com. 5. J.K. Rowling." A page and a half of non-negotiable "Harry Potter Terms of Use" further spells out prohibitions on use or modification of site content without the explicit (and unlikely) consent of AOL-TW (refer: http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com/cmp/te...). References "AOL losses 'sort of a deep disappointment'." Weekend Australian 18-19 May 2002: 35. Auletta, Ken. "Leviathan." New Yorker 29 Oct. 2001: 50-56, 58-61. Collins, Luke. "Harry Potter's Magical $178m Opening." Australian Financial Review 20 Nov. 2001: 9. Corliss, Richard. "Wizardry without Magic." Time 19 Nov. 2001: 136. Dickinson, Amy. "Why Movies make Readers." Time 10 Dec. 2001: 115. Fierman, Daniel, and Jeff Jensen. "Potter of Gold: J.K. Rowling's Beloved Wiz Kid hits Screensand Breaks Records." Entertainment Weekly 30 Nov. 2001: 26-28. Fuchs, Cynthia. "The Harry Hype." PopPolitics.com 19 Nov. 2001: n.pag. Online. Internet. 8 Mar. 2002. Available <http://www.poppolitics.com/articles/2001-11-19-harry.shtml>. Goldberg, Andy. "Time Will Tell." Sydney Morning Herald 27-28 Apr. 2002: 23. Grover, Ronald. "Harry Potter and the Marketer's Millstone." Business Week 15 Oct. 2001: 66. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Dir. Chris Columbus. Screenplay by Steve Kloves. Warner Bros, 2001. "Harry Potter and the Synergy Test." Economist 10 Nov. 2001: 61-62. Herman, Edward S., and Robert W. McChesney. The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism. London: Cassell, 1997. Horn, John, and Malcolm Jones. "The Bubble with Harry." The Bulletin/Newsweek 13 Nov. 2001: 58-59. Jensen, Jeff. "Holiday Movie Preview: Potter's Field." Entertainment Weekly 16 Nov. 2001: 56-57. Klein, Naomi. "Naomi KleinNo Logo." The Media Report. ABC Radio National webtranscript. Broadcast in Sydney, 17 Jan. 2002. Online. Internet. 19 Feb. 2002. Available <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8:30/mediarpt/stories/s445871.htm>. Lyman, Rick, and Julian E. Barnes. "The Toy War for Holiday Movies is a Battle Among 3 Heavyweights." New York Times 12 Nov. 2001: C1. "Magic Kingdom." People Weekly 14 Jan. 2002: 132-36. Manelis, Michele. "Potter Gold." Bulletin 27 Nov. 2001: 110-11. Martin, Peter. "Rowling Stock." Weekend Australian 24-25 Nov. 2001: Review, 1, 4-5. Pulley, Brett. "Morning After." Forbes 7 Feb. 2000: 54-56. Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. London: Bloomsbury, 1997. Schatz, Thomas. "The Return of the Hollywood Studio System." Conglomerates and the Media. Erik Barnouw et al. New York: New Press, 1997. 73-106. Sherber, Anne. "Licensing 2000 Showcases Harry Potter, Rudolph for Kids." Billboard 8 Jul. 2000: 55. Siegel, Seth M. "Toys & Movies: Always? Never? Sometimes!" Brandweek 12 Feb. 2001: 19. ---. "From Hype to Hope." Brandweek 11 Jun. 2001: 24. Traiman, Steve. "Harry Potter, Powerpuff Girls on A-list at Licensing 2000." Billboard 1 Jul. 2000: 51, 53. "Welcome to the 21st Century." Business Week 24 Jan. 2000: 32-34, 36-38. Links http://www.bloomsburymagazine.com/harrypotter/muggles http://www.harrypottersoundtrack.com http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com http://www.poppolitics.com/articles/2001-11-19-harry.shtml http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8:30/mediarpt/stories/s445871.htm http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com/cmp/terms.html Citation reference for this article MLA Style Murray, Simone. "Harry Potter, Inc." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.4 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/recycling.php>. Chicago Style Murray, Simone, "Harry Potter, Inc." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 4 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/recycling.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Murray, Simone. (2002) Harry Potter, Inc.. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(4). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/recycling.php> ([your date of access]).

Aims and scope. This research aims to know the legal status of shares in a limited liability company if the shareholder's whereabouts are unknown in the case of PT APCKP and PT Sun Toy and to analyze the concept of transferring shares in a limited liability company if the shareholder's whereabouts are unknown which provides legal certainty. Method. The form of prescriptive research with statutory and conceptual approaches, using normative juridical methods where the legal materials used are sourced from laws and regulations, books, legal writings and journals, as well as dictionaries or encyclopedias. Using a qualitative method of analysis by interpreting the legal materials that have been processed. The results of the research show that (1) Unknown shareholders in a PT have implications for the existence and validity of the PT, in this case disrupting the quorum at the RUPS, transferring shares becomes difficult because approval from unknown shareholders cannot be obtained, hampering the process of dissolving the PT, and can affect the ownership and control structure of the PT. The request through the court for the unknown shareholder to be determined in a state of absence (afwezigheid) made by PT APCKP and PT Sun Toy, does not provide legal certainty because the concept of absence (afwezigheid) cannot be applied in the case of transfer of rights to shares, which creates ambiguity and is prone to causing new legal problems;(2) KUHPerdata has regulated people whose whereabouts are unknown or have disappeared, in this case the Balai Harta Peninggalan will be appointed as the party that will manage the assets left by the owner. Furthermore, it has also regulated that property rights can be lost if they have expired, which is also adopted in the provisions of the UUPT 2007 regarding the expiration of profits (dividend). When looking at these two concepts, when applied in the transfer of rights to shares owned by unknown shareholders, the concept of expiration is more efficient and provides legal certainty compared to the concept of absence (afwezigheid).

Higgins, Ryan T. We Don’t Eat Our Classmates. Disney-Hyperion, 2018 This is a messy book. Ryan Higgins' drawings are much messier and less precise than his earlier books about Bruce, the bear. However, when you are Pamela Rex, a Tyrannosaurus rex starting school with a room full of delicious human classmates, things get messy, particularly when you have to spit them out. Ryan Higgins taps the absurd in both his images and text to keep children laughing. Penelope still wants to eat the children, even though her father “packed her a lunch of three hundred tuna sandwiches." There is also an image of Penelope trying to “make friends at recess,” but she is standing at the bottom of the playground slide with her mouth open. Penelope does eventually learn a small lesson in empathy when Walter, the class goldfish, bites her. Higgins draws Penelope as a stuffed toy Tyrannosaurus rex, perhaps to prevent children from being frightened. The children are represented by the usual politically correct collection of stereotypes, often identified by clothing. There is one Jewish (yarmulke), one Muslim (hijab), two black (tight curly hair), one Indigenous (braids), one Japanese (the only child with a shirt and tie), and several generic “brown” children. All of the children have dark hair. Blue-eyed blonds are conspicuous by their absence. In addition to being a fun book, this volume allows every child to claim the moral high ground. Every child can say, “I wouldn’t ever do that!”, because all children know that “we don’t eat our classmates.” While this is a book about being different, clashes of values, and learning to get along, it is mainly a book that will amuse children. Recommended for elementary school and public libraries. Recommended: 3 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Sandy Campbell Sandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines. Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.