Trends in Transition from a Work of Art to an Art Object in Children’s Book Publishing

The article is devoted to the current issue of children’s book evolution: the transition from the traditional printed form to a digital analogue, as well as from a work of art to the form of an “art object”. The author borrows this term from postmodernist cultural practices, in the framework of which the principles of creating art objects were rethought, which naturally led to the destruction of style and genre canons. Thus, an art object, being a product of modern creative experiments, is radically different from a classical work of art. Its creator consciously goes beyond the boundaries of traditional artistic practices, the object of creativity itself receives unfinished variant forms, while the viewer’s active interaction with the art object is allowed. As an art object, the book, to a greater extent a children’s book, acquires innovative characteristics in design, illustration, and literary material, changing the reader’s usual idea of itself as a canonical object of printed art.

In the course of comparative analysis of foreign and domestic children’s book culture of the 20—21 centuries the tendencies of both careful preservation of the traditions of the art of the book and the development of innovations that allow to ensure the relevance of the printed book form in modern conditions are noted. The author proposes to understand innovation as radical changes in the forms and ways of presenting the content of children’s books, corresponding to the current technological realities, as well as a change in the status of the book in the process of global digitalization of society. In children’s book publishing, innovation becomes a tool that helps the printed form adapt to the fundamentally new circumstances of the book’s existence in the information space of the child in the 21st century.

A children’s book in the format of an art-object is an interactive field that encourages young readers to active interaction, within which the boundaries between reading, dialogue, fantasy, and play are leveled; co-authorship and co-creation become a priority.

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