WP3

Transformation Reflection

July 26, 1996. Yes, I am a summer baby. This is where I got the idea to research articles on birthdays, summer in particular. One article that I found was “Disadvantages for summer-born children” where researchers present possible, observable hindrances kids born in the summer may face. Some of these issues include low test scores, low self-esteem, repetition of grades, and higher referrals to psychological services (38). Not only does this scholarly article state these issues they also proclaim possible causes for such disadvantages, but they also have results that either proves or falsify the claims stated earlier.

 When I first read this article I was a little defensive because, me being a summer baby, I felt like these claims were not true. I wanted to stand up for all the summer-born children that do not associate with these negative claims. This “victimize” emotion I had given me the idea for the children’s book that I created for the younger audience. I wanted to make the statement that everyone is different and have their own special talents. This message of morality fit well with the genre of children’s book because reverting back to books that I read as a child they were packed full of morality. Some of the books that came to mind were Amelia Bedelia, No,David, and especially The Rainbow Fish. These books are geared for children around the ages of 3-6. The Rainbow Fish book helped me the most with developing my book because it had a similar theme with what I was trying to convey. But, all of the books deal with characters that stand out from the rest of the crowd. Although my book is not on any one character the idea that all people are different is observable in these books.

Another convention of children’s books for ages 3-6 are simple and limited sentences per page. For the most part, I wrote a sentence or less per page. I chose to make two pages have continuing thoughts. I did this to show how individuals compare and contrast. Within the pages, I had illustrations that matched what was going on with text below. This choice of having one illustration per theme is something that I saw in No, David. In these books David is caught getting into trouble, the illustration for the page matches the activity that David is getting himself into. I decided to color the book like this rather than making an entire scene that stretches across the two matching pages because I think it is easier for children to understand one image per one page. I was going to make the images cohesive in that the characters interact, this would have shown the conflict more explicitly but in the story, I wrote there was not interaction so I did not want to confuse the kids that would be reading the book.

It was difficult to include actual facts from the scholarly article into the children’s book but I was able to on a couple of occasions. On one of the pages I wrote, “Some people do well on tests. Some people need more time to learn” this is playing with the proposal that children that are born in the summer have lower test scores because they are the youngest and least developed in the class. I could not physically show the development differences in the brain children have so I chose to display a different physical developmental difference, height. In a way this resembles McCloud’s “Choice of Image” (28), I could have chosen to create a different discrepancy between characters but I felt height was a physical equivalent to intellectual development for the sake of the age group. The scholarly article does not speak about this type of diversity, but I felt this was one of the best ways to differentiate summer born children versus the other children.  I also addressed the topic of being born in the summer versus not being born in the summer with the sentences “Some people have birthdays in December. Others celebrate in the summer” which is the most literal difference I portrayed that I got from the scholarly article.

As for my adult audience geared transformation, I decided to be more literal. I created a “When Should You Get Pregos?” quiz that would most like be seen in a Cosmopolitan magazine. At first, I was going to a make more of a Question and Answer type quiz that was more serious and would be seen in a parenting magazine but I did not feel I had enough information that would make the article believable. In those types of magazines, there tends to be the pro’s and con’s as well as the opposing viewpoint as to not to completely freak out expecting mothers. Since I only had the disadvantages of being born in the summer I felt like the article would have come off as trying to convince people not conceive babies that would eventually be born in the summer. The Cosmo magazine platform was appropriate for the quiz I did end up making because it still has the connotation of being informational, in that people read Cosmopolitan in search of information (typically risqué), but I could still make the subject of babies (baby making) light-hearted.

The questions I made for the quiz were based on the different traits that are being compared in the scholarly article. For example, one of the questions I made was “How well did you do on tests?” this question comes from the hypothesis that summer born children have lower test scores because they have the least developed brains in the class (38). I based the quiz of character traits that the mother potentially had, meaning that I inferred that they would want their baby to be like them. As for the answers that one would choose I tried to make them funny and contemporary since that is the context of the article. The audience for the magazine can range from 18-34, the quiz is suitable for women in this age because it is not serious enough for women that are actually trying to get pregnant (mid-20’s) but is still informational and entertaining for all. Me being the intended age range for this magazine made it relatively easy to “put myself in their shoes” when creating the piece. In “Writing Identities” it describes how writing is about changing to meet the needs of different audiences (117), although I did not have to change much to fit into this audience I did have to however for the younger audience transformation. I thought about what I would want to read and engage with if I came across this quiz. I kept the piece contemporary by including phrases as answers from popular movies such as Mean Girls where I say “On Wednesday we wear pink” for one of the answers for the question “How did you see yourself in high school?”  The contrary to that same question was “I wore Birkenstocks before they were cool” this playing with fashion which is also seen in the magazine.

The quiz follows the mother’s life which leads to a season that the mother should conceive in. The ending answer to the quiz was the most difficult part about making the quiz because I needed to include actual facts from the scholarly article but in a comical way. I ended up Googling other facts about children born in different months to make the quiz true these tidbits can be seen in the three seasons other than summer since I had the information needed for summer in the scholarly article. These answers are more relaxed because I was able to manipulate the facts to fit my needs rather than trying to make the scholarly article fit into the answer. I tried to counterbalance the negatives of the summer answer by starting with a hypothetical positive answer, “What’s better than a summer pool party birthday? NOTHING!” As being a summer child myself I can vouch that those pool party birthdays are the best.  I also had to convert the season/month one is born in into the month/season that the mother would have to conceive in so that their child is born in a certain season. Someone born in summer would have typically been conceived in the fall.

Overall, this project was enjoyable. I liked seeing how my ideas led me to new and better ways to understand what a genre and conventions are but it also showed me some of my own stylistic “moves” that I prefer over others. I had to “kill some of my darlings” as Stephen King says when doing this project but it just made me think more critically of what I wanted and did not as well as helped me write this reflection by guiding me in the analyzing the decisions I made and why I made them.

Work Cited

Losh & Alexander. “Writing Identities”. 113-139.

Mcloud. “Writing With Pictures”. 8-56.

Sharp, Caroline, Nalia George, Claire Sargent, Sharon O’Donnell, Maureen Heron.

“Disadvantages of summer-born children”. Educational Journal 119 (2009). n.38. Web May 2016.

“The Month In Which You’re Born Affects Your Life Experiences”.

https://uber-facts.com/2012/12/11/the-month-your-born-in-affects-your-life-experience/. Web. May 26 2016.

Younger Audience

Older Audience