Jekel 1

Nina Jekel

Jessica Zisa

Writing 2

February 4, 2023

Genre translation: WP1 - Genre Translation

Academic Article Genre Translation - Analytic Essay

“Activist art including environmental art should move away from a dystopian way of

depicting the problems of climate change, toward offering solutions, and emphasizing the beauty

and interconnectedness of nature” (Sommer 73). For many years now, climate activists have

been working tirelessly to bring awareness to what could be the greatest threat to the human race

in all of history: climate change. However, studies of environmental psychology haven’t been

relevant to conversations regarding climate action until recently. There are numerous complex

emotions that come up when dealing with this significant threat to the future of our species,

raising the question of which emotional response is the most motivating or effective in sparking

societal change. This question is addressed in Sommer and Klöckner’s article, “Does Activist Art

Have the Capacity to Raise Awareness in Audiences?— A Study on Climate Change Art at the

ArtCOP21 Event in Paris”. After a survey was conducted in an art exhibit in Paris regarding

various artworks about climate change grouped into “clusters” based on emotional tone (ranging

from “challenging dystopia” to “awesome solution”), it was concluded from the responses of

participants that the artworks that prompted feelings of “happiness”, “hope”, “inspiration”, and

“enthusiasm” were more likely to encourage personal involvement in environmental causes than

those that inflicted “sadness”, “guilt”, “hopelessness”, and “fear”.

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Now, I am an artist who seeks to promote environmental awareness in their work, and

this study resonated heavily with me. When faced with such immense environmental problems

that are guaranteed to affect our lives and the lives of generations to come, it is easy to fall into a

pessimistic mindset; we might feel that our personal efforts are pointless, or that we’re all

doomed. This isn’t productive, however. While it might be important to impress the importance

of this issue upon the public by warning them of the brutal consequences that might be headed

our way, scaring people might not actually be enough to make real progress. According to the

findings of Sommer and Klöckner’s research, “Trying to scare people into change through

dystopian art and news seems to be an easy fix, but does apparently not lead out of the deadlock

of climate change fatigue” (70).

I thought Sommer and Klöckner’s article could be boiled down to an incredibly simple

psychological concept: hope is more productive than fear. When reflecting on this message and

what genre I could effectively translate it to, I was struck by the importance of teaching this

concept to the younger generations (who will have to endure the consequences of climate change

the most) and how easily this simple concept could be translated into a children’s story book.

This created a rather meta-narrative translation (creating an artwork that depicts hope for the

environment), and it conveyed the overall message from the article that hope might get you

farther than fear and despair.

While translating Sommer and Klockner’s peer-reviewed, academic journal into arguably

the most contrasting genre, a children’s story, I contemplated genre as a whole and the different

purposes and intended audiences of each one. According to Lisa Bickmore in her article “Genre

in the Wild”, “A genre evolves through human use and activity to be a durable and usable form

for carrying out human communicative intentions in fairly stable ways” (Bickmore 48). When
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we write, we use the tool of genre to convey a message to our intended audience for our intended

purposes. So in order to communicate a message from one audience to another, the genre must

be adapted to fit that audience’s needs. In this case, the message itself had to be radically

simplified and the genre drastically changed to fit the audience of young children whose brains

are not developed enough to understand the complex nuances from the findings of the Paris

climate survey or understand the academically intellectual language.

As the genre of children's books is relatively conventional and standard in structure,

recreating one was fairly straightforward. A few searches through the internet told me that a

children’s book should be roughly 24 - 40 pages, and range from 300 - 5,000 words, depending

on the reader’s age and reading level. Intending to target the age of 4-6 and hit the genre of

“picture book” specifically, I created a children’s story of 28 pages, using roughly 600 words.

Another incredibly fundamental component of the picture book genre is obvious: pictures!

Illustrations are key when capturing the engagement and interest of young readers, and this

introduced a challenge for me, as I am not much of a visual artist. However, I knew of a tool that

I could use, and though I was admittedly hesitant to use it at first, I generated images using the

help of artificial intelligence (I know AI cannot come close to creating images as artful or

complex as a human can, and using one might give me some existential dread about the

implications of widespread appreciation of superficial art lacking any depth, but hey, it works in

a pinch). AI generated images come with several limitations, as it did not understand some

prompts; I had to restructure prompts many times in some cases in order to find an image that

worked, and each prompt had to be detailed and descriptive.

In addition to my internet search about the conventions of this genre, I also consulted a

few children’s books that I loved growing up, and I reread them like a writer, as Mike Bunn
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suggests writers do in his essay, “How to Read Like a Writer”, and I noticed the rhetorical

strategies used. Some of the books I examined were Froggy Learns to Swim by Jonathan

London, Frog and Toad All Year by Arnold Lobel, and The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. In

doing so, I picked up on a few key factors about the genre: it often leans into metaphors

involving some sort of lesson about life (often an emotional one), it relies on very simple

language, characters, and concepts, and it avoids using too many advanced words that would be

difficult for a young child to read and comprehend. I noticed that many children’s books also

utilize non-human characters, perhaps to build on the imaginative and whimsical nature of

childhood, or maybe to help develop a deeper sense of empathy in young readers. I found these

discoveries helpful while writing in this genre, implementing characters of frogs, birds, and fish

to activate those young readers' imaginations.

As I reflected on genre for the purpose of conveying a message to this new specific

audience, I realized how important a role genre plays in one’s writing. Rhetorical strategies and

intentional writing choices change depending on the genre and intended audience, and we use

various genres often in our daily lives. We might take what we learned in an academic article for

a class, for example, and alter the stylistic choices of language entirely when explaining it to a

friend, referencing it on social media, or teaching it to a child. In this way, genre is everywhere

around us. Taking what I learned about environmental psychology from Sommer and Klockner’s

research and translating it into a story book for children was incredibly eye-opening for me about

what genre entails, and how it affects how we write and engage with the world around us.
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Works Cited

Bickmore, Lisa and David Buck. “Genre in the Wild: Understanding Genre within Rhetorical

(Eco)Systems.” Essentials for ENGL121, Howard Community College, 1 July 2020,

https://pressbooks.howardcc.edu/essentials/chapter/genre-in-the-wild-understanding-genre-withi

n-rhetorical-ecosystems/.

Blume, Judy. “How to Write a Children's Book .” MasterClass, 30 Aug. 2021,

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-a-childrens-book.

Bunn, Mike. “Readings.” How to Read Like a Writer, 2022,

https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350119444.ch-r.

Image

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTIsgqbnivOERiKS9ZHgB6TMI88-T

XLFXy1IfhzYCequVQydII&s

Image

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQngcRqtF_J9FyOgR9Rn5Z1Tyx6VX

X9TOx3MZy9yahXGhOKn9c&s

Image

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQpugbvq6Tmat1x4auMdhXRgFsOJ9

xXy9AyseMYdJzsX9AZwlo&s

Lobel, Arnold. Frog and Toad All Year. 1st ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.
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London, Jonathan, and Frank Remkiewicz. Froggy Learns to Swim. New York: Scholastic Inc.,

1997.

“Midjourney by Discord.” Midjourney, 2023, https://www.midjourney.com/app/

Silverstein, Shel. The Giving Tree. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.

Sommer, Laura Kim, and Christian Andreas Klöckner. “Does Activist Art Have the Capacity to

Raise Awareness in audiences?—A Study on Climate Change Art at the ArtCOP21 Event in

Paris.” Psychology of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts 15.1 (2021): 60–75. Web.

https://search.library.ucsb.edu/permalink/01UCSB_INST/1876c7q/cdi_proquest_journals_25029

07941

Vitale, Brooke. “A Template for Children’s Book Layout, Pagination and Design.” BrookeVitale,

4 Oct. 2020,

https://brookevitale.com/blog/childrens-book-layout#:~:text=The%20standard%20picture%20bo

ok%20page,pages%2C%20but%20there%20are%20exceptions