'Scanimation' Makes its Debut in Picture Books
RSSBy Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 10/25/2007
A patented new technology called Scanimation that appears to make animals and other living creatures move on a page makes its debut in children's books this holiday season.
Workman Publishing will introduce the invention to readers, age three and up, in Gallop! by Rufus Butler Seder, which will be followed by a second Scanimation book in 2008.
Raquel Jaramilla, the editor of Gallop!, remembers first coming across the technology in greeting cards that she spotted at a gift trade show. "I just stopped in my tracks when I saw it; I really thought it was so magical. I don't remember the last time I was dazzled that much."
Jaramilla, a graphic artist who previously worked for 17 years at Henry Holt as vice president and creative director of its adult trade division, had created book covers for authors like Paul Auster and Thomas Pynchon. Gallop! is the first children's book she has brought to Workman.
Scanimation, Jaramilla explains, uses a technology based on the same principles as kinetoscopes, zoetropes, and other nineteenth century antiques that employed an optical illusion using the persistence of memory to create the flow of motion.
No computer chip is involved, says Jaramilla, only an acetate overlay made up of stripes that is flowed over a patented, scrambled image underneath. "You get the fluidity of motion.
Does scanimation belong in a library? In recent years, librarians have seen "novelty books" offering inventions such as the "chirping" sound in the back of Eric Carle's picture book The Very Quiet Cricket (Penguin, 1997). And they've seen books that talk, have blinking lights, and that can go into the bathtub.
Jane Marino, director of the Bronxville Public Library in New York and president of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), says, "I like to think of myself as a purist who can use a book with lovely pictures, and it'll work. But at the same time, this is a very visual generation who've been raised on television and computers and video games. I think this [Scanimation] is an attempt by publishers doing things like this to tap into that market.”
Marino says that parents with kids who don’t read much but “like really visual things” might be attracted to the book.
Is the book appropriate for libraries? They quickly reject books with buttons and other features that young patrons tend to destroy, Marino says. But they do buy pop-up books for story time, if not for circulation.
Would she buy Gallop for story time? "Probably," Marion says. "I'd have to see it, though."
