The Earthgang, or: How to Bring Children's Books Online
For over a year, we have been working with Ingrid Harrison, creator and author of the children's book series "Die Earthgang", to give her books an online presence. At www.earthgang.de, children aged 6-12 can find exciting adventures and short stories. These stories revolve around a diverse group of children traveling the world and experiencing thrilling adventures. The challenge for our agency was primarily to translate the books into a multimedia storytelling format.
In choosing the appropriate narrative form, we opted for a presentation style that combines text and image interactively, giving readers the feeling that they can always interact with the content on the screen. This "digital storytelling" or “Scrollytelling” is referred to by the industry magazine t3n as the "supreme discipline" of multimedia journalism.
A wide range of tools and applications now exist in the market, allowing for the quick and easy realization of a multimedia narrative style. However, this project was further complicated by the fact that the target audience is children. This requires a more sensitive approach, greater clarity, and even more vivid images and effects to keep the excitement high while leaving enough room for the reader's imagination.
CHILDREN'S STORIES TO "SCROLL"
The goal was to write the stories in a way that they a) appear engaging and b) maintain suspense, even when multiple stories follow this presentation format.
First, it is important to divide a story into individual meaningful sections. The background consists of various photos and graphics on which the individual text sections are placed for easy reading. A graphic fine-tuning then ensures the right atmosphere on the page.
Each "slide" is equipped with multimedia elements designed to make reading more exciting.
These elements can portray individual members of the Earthgang, but also simple, everyday objects that subtly shape the course of the story.
The material for the stories comes from illustrator Tina Kraus, who already designed the books in the Earthgang series.
SHORT STORIES AND NEWS FOR CHILDREN
Visualizing the children's books on the website was the first important part of the project. The second was to accompany the respective adventures with editorial articles. In these, individual aspects from the short stories are picked up and explained explicitly for children.
The first official online adventure of the Earthgang, for example, deals with the Statue of Liberty in New York.
Left in the picture: Ingrid Harrison, author of the Earthgang. Right in the picture: Tina Kraus, illustrator of the Earthgang
For each part of an adventure, which consists of several parts, the editorial team designs a background article, which is also staged multimedia.
In the first article, children learn more about the 10 secrets of the Statue of Liberty, and in the second article, they learn about what the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty have in common. The challenge in these two cases was less about the presentation form and more about finding the right language.
How much knowledge can be assumed for children in this age group (6-12)? What tone is truly appropriate? Which expressions are not? Which complex terms and facts need to be explicitly explained? How do you write for children without coming across as "childish"? These are the questions the editors had to address...
What emerged after a year of numerous coordination rounds can be seen here for yourself.
CONCLUSION
The Earthgang project was our first in the field of "digital storytelling". What made it particularly exciting was the fact that the stories were written and digitally prepared for children, the most critical target group of all. We are eager to see the reactions of both young and old readers and wish all interested parties much enjoyment with the adventures & articles from the world of the Earthgang. A special thanks goes to the author Ingrid Harrison, who made this special project possible and kept our curiosity and willingness to experiment alive through her trust.
