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Matthew Harris included interactive worksheets on idioms to further educate children on their use. Image courtesy Matthew Harris<\/p>\nIt has always been a goal of mine to publish a book. I\u2019ve always loved to write and have always felt that pull to see my own words in print. Sure, I got featured in a few poetry anthologies when I was younger. Those opportunities scratched a part of that itch, but they still weren\u2019t the whole shebang. They weren\u2019t mine. But now, I\u2019ve finally done it. I have written a children\u2019s book of my own, with the help of somewhat controversial modern technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The idea for my kids\u2019 book, \u201cIdiomania,\u201d came from my own time as an English teacher. I\u2019ve always had a fascination with figurative language and often implemented activities centered around them in my lessons. For those of you who haven\u2019t gone through an English class in years, idioms are phrases with meanings that can\u2019t be determined by simply reading the words\u2014common expressions like \u201cit\u2019s raining cats and dogs\u201d and \u201cin a jam.\u201d<\/p>\n
When I was in college, I played around with my favorite idioms for an assignment in my creative-writing class. My teacher in that class was the one who suggested I turn that idea into a book. So, when I decided to finally write one, I centered my book around idioms.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Books like Jon Agee\u2019s \u201cGo Hang a Salami! I\u2019m a Lasagna Hog! And Other Palindromes\u201d also served as inspiration for \u201cIdiomania,\u201d especially when it came to writing about figurative language for kids. But as much as rhythmic language and catchy phrases might allure a kid, every children\u2019s book lives and dies by its pictures.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Matthew Harris included interactive worksheets on idioms to further educate children on their use. Image courtesy Matthew Harris<\/p>\n
If you flip open a copy of \u201cIdiomania,\u201d you may notice that artificial-intelligence tools ChatGPT and Dall-E are credited for the book\u2019s illustrations. While many people consider AI-generated images a lazy choice when it comes to book art, a lot of deliberation actually went into the choice to use the technology for my book\u2019s images.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Initially, I intended to use a traditional artist, but I didn\u2019t want to send them into the manuscript without some concept of what I wanted the pictures to look like. I\u2019m certainly no artist, so I asked ChatGPT to design the mockups. My publisher loved my samples and suggested I clean them up in places and let those serve as the book\u2019s images.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
While I liked the images that AI created, I still wanted to publish my book in the same way books had always been published. But then I had a realization: Book production has always adapted to changes in technology\u2014from the invention of the printing press in the 15th century to the advent of personal computers and the internet. Books are supposed to teach us something, children\u2019s books especially, so why not use AI to teach about AI? Instead of replacing my AI images, I followed my publisher\u2019s suggestion and cleaned the images up\u2014mostly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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In this opinion column, Matthew Harris writes on his belief that using AI images and AI errors in his book allows for children to question and explore the accuracy of AI. Image courtesy Matthew Harris<\/p>\n
I intentionally left some AI errors for my young readers to find. By doing this, I invite children to explore and question the accuracy of the AI-generated images that appear in the book in the same way adults must do when we see images and videos online.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The AI challenge rounds out a set of interactive elements at the back of the book, which also includes worksheets and other learning tools. As a lifelong educator, it was important that my book have as much educational value as entertainment value, which goes back to the reason I decided to write a book on idioms in the first place.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Using AI also helped me expand my skills for my job. I work as an instructor for Mississippi Coding Academies<\/a>, a free coding education program targeting people from all walks of life.<\/p>\n With help from funders like the Walton Family Foundation, MCA focuses on upskilling Mississippi residents and positioning them for careers in the tech field, regardless of prior education. With the AI boom, we have also entered the Mississippi AI Collaborative, a statewide initiative with a similar mission but a narrower focus on AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n When I look back on it, the decision to use AI-generated images in my first book aligns perfectly with the spirit of \u201cIdiomania\u201d as well as my work training people to code. The book explores the quirks and playfulness of the English language, so pairing that with an unconventional creative process was \u201cicing on the cake.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n While I didn\u2019t have the experience of working with a human illustrator this time around, I got the opportunity to explore emerging tools and reimagine how stories can be told. I feel joy when I hold \u201cIdiomania\u201d in my hand and a sense of pride that I \u201cwent out on a limb\u201d and tried something different.<\/p>\n This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org<\/a>. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It has always been a goal of mine to publish a book. I\u2019ve always loved to write and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[291,359,2597,18,117,19,17,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-9958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}