Josie and the Whales

Josie and the Whales is an international award-winning, multi-modal screened book for children and young adult readers aged 8 – 12 years old. The book is motivated by my passion for illustration for children’s publishing and my interest in the medium of digital technology in augmenting children’s individual and group reading experiences. Originally intended for print reading, it is designed to accommodate the motor actions associated with digital reading (touch, tap, turn and swipe) and the interactivity afforded by iPad technology. It is proposed as meeting current reading practices, and an educational tool for the young reader to start exploring and engaging in conversations relating to conservation and species preservation. 

 

The eco-critical, magical realist narrative tells the story of a young female protagonist with special powers, and how she and her pet pig join forces with the creatures and elements of the Southern Ocean to protect the blue whales from being hunted and processed by whalers hunting off the Antarctic ice shelf. The fabula is conveyed through comic book sequential art and an embedded ambient soundscape as opposed to the picture-book juxtaposition of image and text. Each narrative image is augmented with a complementary soundscape composed of digitally manipulated site-recordings or open-sourced sounds that are activated by a touch button device. This device, positioned in the bottom right-hand corner of the page, is designed to enable the reader to take meaningful action and through that action become an operator in the screened book’s auditory and visual diegetic space and thematic commentary.  


Keywords: Fantasy, Girl Hero, Kune Kune Pig, Whales, Whale Hunting, Ecology, Preservation, New Zealand, Antarctica.