Experience New YA Lit Trends | Mary-andering Creatively

Welcome to my new blog. This blog is going to be my fun blog where I share the latest books I am reading, inspirational thoughts, poetry and muses.

My first entree will focus on the latest trends in teenage lit. Many teens hate reading. If it were not for Stephenie Meyers and her vampire series, Twilight, many young people would not even crack a book. So alas what can educators and members of the publishing industry do to keep teens reading? Know thy audience and work to create reading experiences that are real and exciting for teens.

Great books with riveting tales for young people need to keep flowing. Promotion and leadership is needed by all parties. We have to think outside the box and use today’s technology to entice young people to love reading. To accomplish this seemingly impossible feat, many forward thinking young adult authors and publishers are experimenting with today’s technologies to create a new kind of full immersion, literature experience as teens read their stories.

For example, Wattpad.com is working to attract young audiences by creating transmedia experiences. Dubbed the YouTube of text, Wattpad is serializing popular teen literature and engaging teens in multimedia experiences as they read weekly installments of their favorite tales written by leading YA authors. Teens read each chapter and then engage in online chatrooms with other readers; they can watch video episodes associated with each installment; and they can visit Twitter to ask questions of the characters as the stories unfold. Two recent examples of transmedia stories are Fragile Towerby Gytha Lodge and The Survivors by Amanda Havard.

Both are stories of wonder and magic involving travel to different times and realms. The authors also hosted contest to stir up excitement about their books. The contest on Lodge’s book ended Thursday, January 31 at midnight. Readers were encouraged to write an essay on their favorite book character. Lodge announced the winner of the contest on February 4^th.

Havard’s story goes even further in reeling in readers by creating an even richer transmedia experience. Readers can visit her home page on Wattpad and then link to her author’s homepage and then the homepage for The Survivors book series (http://www.thesurvivorsseries.com/.) Once there, readers can link to the Tumbler retelling edition of the novel.

Havard describes it as “a piece-by-piece version of the story using all types of media. Photos, excerpts, music, lyrics, documents, videos, maps, conversations, quotes, and anything else we can think of will tell the story just as if you were immersed in the pages (and those pages happening to dance and do magic tricks).” Havard has also created an app for the latest book in the series, available at http://immersedition.com/. The app promises a new revolutionary, interactive book experience where, you the reader, can delve further into The Survivors series and connect with the book using new and richer technological enhancements.

You can also visit Havard’s blog for the latest news about the book series including a just announced contest. (http://amandahavard.com./blog/) Also be sure to check out the original songs by popular artists like Chris Mann and Elle Maze.

Leading YA authors are not the only writers on Wattpad. Young people are also invited to create and share their own novels in serial publishing. There is even an annual contest to name the best Wattpad young authors where more than $20,000 in prizes were up for grabs.

Wattpad is not the only publisher delving into the transmedia craze. Another leading YA author, Patrick Carmen, recently partnered with Scholastic to launch his own transmedia novel experience at http://315stories.com/home/. Teens first must buy the latest book in the 315 story series at Amazon or other bookstores. They cost about a buck a piece. The reader will find a secret code in each book to enter on the website where they can participate in interactive storytelling experiences and games as they read each story. The series is already in its second season with spine chilling titles like: Intruder Alert, a cautionary tale about robots and murder.

It is a brave new world for books as they evolve and change. Critics may complain that that transmedia is going to kill the format of the book, but I think if handled correctly transmedia will save the book. The movement is still in its infancy, but the future promises more exciting ways to pull readers in (especially young adults) as the book melds with the latest technologies to open up unimaginable story worlds to explore.

Here are links to even more experiments in this exciting evolution of the printed book:

Patrick Carmen’s The Trackers at : http://www.trackersbook.com/#/home

JC Hutchins : http://jchutchins.net/

A humorous, but thought provoking critique on transmedia is offered by Michael Jones at : http://www.mikejones.tv/journal/2011/4/4/transmedia-storytelling-is-bullshit.html

Jackie Parker, Sno-Isle Libraries and Rachel McDonald, King County Library System presented “When a Book is More than Paper: Transmedia Trends in YA Literature Transmedia: What Is It? 1.” at the YALSA 2012 YA Literature Symposium in St. Louis in November 2012. This is a link to their presentation: http://prezi.com/l0j03_mb1dma/when-stories-are-more-than-paper-transmedia-trends-in-young-adult-literature/

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