To Parents
To provide an introduction to our children’s book section, we can discuss various aspects of for-children content. Let’s focus on one of them for the time being: the proper simultaneous development of reality-knowledge and imagination.
Parent’s main menu for content: market and culture
Most parents prefer to provide their children with books that don't hinder social and psychological development. With a limited time, most parents rely on some personal research and referrals to find suitable books, and the menu of options is largely determined by the market. The market, being a market, decides mostly based on competition, to produce books that sell more. This profit-primacy can shift the market outputs away from being beneficial and healthy for human flourishing, and more towards creating and following trends. Most parents in the busy modern life don't have much time to do in-depth search outside the spotlight to sift and find gems.
What input from outside is beneficial for the inside?
Humans are a part of this world, and the physical and biological realities of this world and the human body and psyche must be properly noted in order to have beneficial inputs for human development and flourishing. We know that our body needs real food to grow, and we know that showing babies some pictures of food or giving them fake paper food won’t result in proper development. This is trivial for the body. But what about the psyche? Why is it the case that culturally such a trivial thing is so widely neglected?
Imagination and Reality
Besides the necessity of knowing natural and personal and social realities for being a functional and mature person, parents also like children’s imagination to develop. A hyper-real person is found to be boring and uninteresting (the biggest problem of being hyper-real will be discussed below). It’s good to avoid two extreme pitfalls: Being hyper-real is often noted and avoided, but another pitfall is underdevelopment of reality-knowledge and reality-discernment, and an inadequate ability to discern the borders and relations between reality and imagination, between what's realizable and what's not, between what feels like real and is indeed real and what feels like real but isn't real.
So we have two aspects of inputs that must be properly measured to result in human flourishing: reality and imagination. How much and what kind of input about reality should a child (and a human, in general) be exposed to, and how much and what kinds of imaginary input?
Global market often pushes towards mis-using imagination:
The profit-primacy of the competitive market of children’s books has gradually shifted the contents towards abusing imagination: in quantity, too much, and in quality, mostly unconstructive and unhealthy.
A significant cause of this shift is that in a competition for market survival, contents that "hook" the reader and grab attention are more likely to be selected by publishers and other market forces, and human flourishing is usually not the primary factor in these dynamics. Note that we're discussing the rule, not the exception. Good exceptions exist, and a main effort at readsVille is to be a good exception.
Why care about imagination?
Imagination is currently often seen mainly as a tool for amusement, for “fun”. And as mentioned above, the global market (e.g., publishers and studios) use imagination mainly to generate content that amuses and sells.
An important life-function of imagination is often gone unnoticed in the prevalent global culture: A person with a healthy and mature imagination can envision alternatives to the status quo of personal and social life, imagine alternatives that can become reality, and become a writer of stories that contain profound wisdom about the inner and social world of humans.
Creativity is realization of the imagined
Imagination is a container of ideas that, if joined with reality-knowledge, can guide towards discovery. Where does every invention, in technology and society, come from?
A visionary and insightful mind is one which (1) knows reality very well, including what is possible and what is not, the causal relations in nature and culture, (2) can envision what can be which currently is not. Such a creative mind can generate implementable “I have a dream”s, can can cultivate fruitful ideas for invention, re-form, and re-construction.
It is also important to note that the said benefits are not only for the social world, but also for personal life. Well-trained imagination guides one’s individual life towards betterment, towards making good changes, improvements, correct “let go”s, good reconsiderations, and beneficial reconstructions.
An underdeveloped imagination is not well-trained on the borders of reality and unreality, and conjures up fictions that cannot be implemented in real life.
For a child with a mal-developed imagination, reality and imagination become increasingly divided, two disconnected worlds: a fictional world of movies and books, and a real (and mostly uninteresting) world of “real life”. And this happens in the name of embracing imagination and fiction (via inundation with fictional input since childhood).
A grown-up with a mal-developed imagination cannot distinguish well between reality and fiction, and might reach a point of indifference in life where reality is up for grabs, and cultural tides, via feelings and emotions they induce, determine what is real.
-Side note: Even “hope” is linked to imagination. Who has false hope? One who has hope in the impossible, which is one who does not know well what’s possible and what’s impossible.
Counter-intuitive point: Reality empowers imagination
This is a key point to best imaginative maturity. To develop and empower imagination, one must know reality well. Knowing reality well is necessary for training imagination well. Reality empowers imagination.
Best works of fiction are those who get causality right, who present a relatable depiction of the feelings and emotions and thought processes and social dynamics of characters, even though the story might be taking place in a fictional world with imaginary elements. Solid knowledge of realities of human experiences and life is an essential component of masterpieces of imaginary-driven creativity. Review your favorite fiction novels and stories and you will see that, even if in an imaginary setup, the ingredient that made them relatable and enjoyable for you are those realities that transcend the boundaries of fiction, that is, realities that hold both in the real world and in the imaginary world of the story.
Counter-intuitive point about "Consuming" fiction
It is a prevalent error to think that consuming fiction improves imagination. Being the receiver of the a deluge of outputs from the imagination of writers and animators and studio producers does not improve a child's imagination. Rather, it buries the child's imagination. A child that produces a mishmash of consumed imaginary outputs of others, such as action figures and superheroes, is not having an authentic imagination-driven creative experience.
Consuming the imagination of publishers might actually weaken a child's constructive imagination-driven creativity, because it's two steps away from reality: the child is being introduced to reality mediated by the mind of other people. Direct reality-knowledge is necessary. Other’s imagination can be consulted, of course, but once one’s own mind has grown and matured and established appropriately.
Forgotten: Children make reality-model from given inputs
It’s too often forgotten that the inputs children receive is what they build their model of reality with. Adults are like the tour guides who introduce this world to children: how this world works, what is and what is not, what can be and what cannot be, how things are…
For an adult reading to a child a fictional comic book with many colors and visual elements, or putting the child in front of such animation, it might be clear what’s real and what’s not, and the content is mainly for fun. But for children, it’s among the first inputs that they’re supposed to know the world with.
It is true that children gradually learn that cartoon characters are not real, but it’s not a 0 vs 100 situation. Yes, children learn the obvious distinctions, but the problem under focus is about proper development of imagination faculties and their proper functionality in life.
Generation “confused”:
As we said, the market of content for children (such as publishers and studios) uses fiction as a tool for attention-grabbing products to increase sales. This has shaped the environment children grow in. Children are bombarded with fictional content, from books to screens, with high speed and vast volumes, too much for them to process.
If we discard habit and see the content generated for children globally, we see that too much of it is like a big disarray of surreal visions. Usually delirium is associated with internal feverish states, displayed outwardly as incoherent chatter. That is, internal turmoil, externalized. But what is imposed on many children today is in the reverse direction: it's like they're being brought up in environmental delirium. The outside is delirious, and so is the input they take, disturbing their cognitive composure and mental development. External turmoil, internalized.
Children are therefore being forced to getting used to being confused. Worse, they are getting used to not grasping, and just touching ideas quickly and moving on, because the stream of content is too fast and/or too big to digest.
Both form and content are important for a healthy input: The reality of the human body is linked to the speeds and volumes of the physical world. This is the healthy “base” in which the human psyche develops and matures, and once established and strong, it can constructively manage faster and more voluminous inputs. So in addition to the reality-content of the inputs, the volume and speed must also be appropriate for a good output.
False dichotomy
One might think above criticisms of the current manner publishers and studios misuse fictional elements is equivalent to an invitation to a dry and constrictive limitation to reality: reading only biographies, merely observing nature and studying science, and suppressing imagination. This is a false alternative. Objecting to the hijacking of a gem is not a suggestion for discarding the gem, rather, it's a suggestion for rescuing it.
We are inviting towards a proper development and good use of imagination.
Note about morality:
It must be noted that we re discussing imagination as a tool, and a “good” way of using it will depend on morality. That is, at every level of development, one can abuse imagination and imagine alternatives that are indeed implementable, but are bad. The goodness comes from moral growth.
Our design
Minding the above discussions, in the children’s book section of Readsville, we try to follow these guidelines:
-Imagination: We try to stay away from the over-doing and mal-doing of fictional and imaginary elements currently globally prevalent among publishers and studios. We strive towards constructive and healthy employment of imagination, and at the same time, incorporate reality correctly. We try to be mindful of realities of both nature and psyche, Two of the books ("What is Real, what is not", and "It Feels like Real, but it's not") explicitly discuss the issue of imagination and reality in a story setting.
-Intensity: We try to maintain a constructive degree of quietness in design and content: not boring and bland, but also not too crowded and overwhelming.
-Technology: Another false dichotomy is that any criticism related to how tech is used in children or people’s lives means being “anti-technology”. Over-use or mal-use of technology can disrupt one’s link to reality: it can distort perceptions, distance mind from reality, it can make us forget the humanness of interactions. Discussions about technology can easily become more voluminous than what was said so far about imagination, so we won't elaborate more.
In our illustrations, the usage of technology is purposefully moderate. All illustrations are by hand, and even the vibrations of the hands of the illustrator is kept. Many of the inaccuracies and imperfections of the illustrations are purposeful. The illustrations deliberately don’t look like typical “industry standard” or “professional” styles.