Digital Ehon Award Interview Series, Vol. 14

“Digital Ehon to Share with Family”

　Ms. Kidachi has been creating picture books for her family. This was her first attempt at creating a Digital Ehon, and she won the Special Jury Award. On the day of the awards ceremony, the entire Kidachi family attended, and we spoke with Ms. Kidachi about her thoughts on Digital Ehon.

　“I make handmade picture books as birthday gifts for my family,” says Ms. Kidachi. She has created six picture books to date. Her new work, *Riku All Alone*, won the Judges’ Special Award at the 2nd Digital Ehon Award.She explained that this work was a picture book created as a first-birthday gift for her beloved dog. Until now, she had been creating original paper picture books by drawing the illustrations, gluing them together, and binding the pages. However, after learning about a tool that allows her to easily create Digital Ehon simply by scanning her drawings, she decided to take on this challenge.“For a while now, my kids had been asking me things like, ‘Make the dinosaurs move!’” And, at the suggestion of her husband—who works in the IT field—she submitted the book to the Digital Ehon Awards.

“Riku All Alone” was created to help children understand the Great East Japan Earthquake.“The footage of the tsunami was just too shocking. My sensitive eldest son, in particular, kept begging me to turn it off.” She needed to convey the facts about the Great East Japan Earthquake clearly while minimizing the trauma for her children. “After seeing volunteers struggling to rescue dogs and cats swept away by the tsunami, I decided to try telling the story with a dog as the main character.”

　“Riku All Alone” is the story of “Riku,” the dog protagonist, who is swept away by the tsunami. Although he manages to survive, he becomes separated from his eight siblings and his mother. “This dog no longer has an owner or a mother.I thought about how to convey that—not just through images, nor just through words.” She said she revised the manuscript countless times to decide which scenes to include so as not to shock the children too much. As a result, she cut out quite a few pages, and this time it became a short story.
“If I don’t write it down, it will be forgotten. I want children to keep this firmly in their memories even when they grow up.”

　“In the scene where he desperately struggles to get out of the water and sleeps among the trash on a cold, dark night, I wanted to make it snow, but I didn’t know how. Also, I wanted to add more sound effects, but I didn’t know how to remove the background noise after recording,” she said, noting that there were technical limitations that prevented her from fully realizing her vision.“If there were a GUI tool for creating Digital Ehon books that anyone could use easily, I think there would be many, many more people who would want to make them,” she says. She also mentioned that the Grand Prix winner of the Digital Ehon Award was a company, and proposed, “Wouldn’t it be great if there were a system that allowed individuals to collaborate on creating Digital Ehon books?”If people like Ms. Kidachi, who come up with stories and illustrations, collaborated with those knowledgeable about technology, the range of creative expression would likely expand even further.

Furthermore, after watching her three children and neighborhood children read picture books and Digital Ehon, she remarked, “I felt that the two must exist as completely different things.”“What I want to convey to children through paper picture books includes the tactile sensation of turning the pages, as well as the size and weight of the paper itself. If we try to recreate a paper picture book in a Digital Ehon format, the paper version ends up feeling more interesting.We need to do something more different.” She added that she was surprised and delighted to learn that the children themselves are beginning to tackle this challenge, as evidenced by the middle school students’ award this time.

　What does Ms. Kitachi consider a fun Digital Ehon? “I want to create Digital Ehons that move in ways the viewer couldn’t imagine.Something like a jack-in-the-box that surprises children.” He expressed regret that he had become too tied to the concept of a “picture book” and ended up creating something too tame. “I want to cherish that sense of excitement and anticipation in children. I want to use Digital Ehon to engage in dynamic play, just like when I play with children in everyday life, and see the look of surprise and laughter on their faces.”

　Finally, she suggested, “Wouldn’t it be nice to give Digital Ehon books to children in the hospital who are confined to sterile rooms and can’t go outside?” Ms. Kidachi’s family lives next to a hospital district, and she says she has seen many such children.“Occasionally, celebrities hold events at hospitals. That’s wonderful in its own way, but they can’t really bring much of everyday life into those settings. Digital Ehon, however, is packed with the vastness of the world.”
They stimulate the imagination of all children and broaden their horizons. I hope Digital Ehon will continue to evolve into a form of expression that does just that.