Casual writers in social media and texting are using emojis to convey a new layer of meaning. Gretchen McCulloch states that "emojis and other pictorial elements are filling the third important pillar of communication." They are offering writers a way of representing gestures, the kind we use in speaking, and physical space. In our LING 590 class (Internet Language), we study the writing of the internet in communication and we decided to write two children's books using emojis.
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Bugsy the Bee's Big Adventure
Jonah L., Zachery Irvin, Jake Wildstrom, Zachariah Robinson, and Hilaria Cruz
Bugsy the bee goes on a quest for pollen.
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Skyler's Lunch
Noah Sherman, Autumn Boone, and Hilaria Cruz
Our class was studying the use of emojis across different platforms and wanted to explore how stories using emojis could impact young readers. Here, we try to translate the story of Skyler into emoji, providing translations along the way. We replace words completely with emoji, represent phrases with a few emoji, and use additional emoji to make sense of the content, including punctuation. In this book, we explore the character of Skyler, who is a picky eater. But they learn to eat the nutritious food that is good for them. In the end, they even get a reward!
