Engaging teenagers with book trailers: course report

Book trailers are an excellent means of engaging teenagers in reading and writing. Gordana Nesterovic recently attended a course about them and has shared her report:

I recently attended this CPD session which was organized by Scottish Book Trust as a follow up to the ReadIT course on digital storytelling. ReadIT was a pilot scheme aimed at developing teachers’ skills through the inclusion of ICT tools and digital storytelling techniques in classroom practice. Students and teachers from Denmark, Italy, Romania, Turkey and Scotland took part.

The first part of the CPD session was a video-link presentation by Shirley Brice Heath (linguistic anthropologist and Professor of both English and Dramatic Literature) who talked about young people’s reading habits, preferences and how they choose to interact with texts. I thought it exemplified an interesting approach in trying to encourage teenagers to read and write by "finding them where they are most comfortable" – in social media websites. In creating book trailers, students are applying knowledge gained outside the school back into academic achievement. Creating a book trailer is a form of translation, shifting something from a page in the book into a different medium and timescale. It shows multi-literacies at work: music, visual effects, movement, animation and character portrayal. This method makes the students think of what the book is about, rather than what the book says. Shirley Brice Heath also mentioned ideal outcomes of trailer production: pupils identify with the "good company" of other authors and artists, and take on roles other than that of “pupil” by becoming imaginative, creative and artistic, and by acting as critics and definers of their own work.

The second part of the session was a presentation by two Scottish teachers who took part in this course. They talked about their experiences in implementing these ideas and their feedback was very positive. The children enjoyed the project and the project brought out the best in them. It worked really well with reluctant readers and children who generally came across as being very shy. It developed their analytical, artistic and technical skills. I thought the example of a school that did it as cross-curricular project was very good, it got the Art, Computing and English departments working together which showed the possibility of using this tool in teaching other subjects, not just English. I do not work as a teacher or in a school library, but I can see how this example would be interesting for student teachers and would shed an inspirational light on teaching practices.

Here is an excellent example of a book trailer, as mentioned at the IBBY UK/NCRCL MA Conference Beyond the Book a few weeks ago. It's for A monster calls by Patrick Ness:

The Spark

The Spark is a new online community for young people aged 13-16 who are interested in creativity and reading. Set up by Faber and Faber, the publishers, and hosted on Facebook, it will feature exciting projects around acting, film-making, writing and music. Each project will be inspired by a Faber young adult title. The current competition is linked to the publication of The things we did for love by Natasha Farrant and the prize is an iPad! In the story, Arianne and Luc fall in love in Occupied France during the Second World War. Luc gets involved with the Resistance and, although Arianne will do anything to keep him safe, there is a rival for her love who doesn't feel so kindly towards him. To tie in with the book's themes, entrants should submit a story, poem or article about love or war. The closing date is 10th June.

The next competition will be looking for a budding film maker to direct a book trailer. Sounds like an excellent way to get teenagers to engage with books and reading.

Bali Rai

Bali Rai is an author of teenage novels, largely inspired by his working class Punjabi / Sikh background (in Leicester) but accessible to everyone. He recently finished a stint as Writer in Residence at MyVoice, a  creative reading and writing programme for young people run by The Reading Agency, and is now Online Writer in Residence at Booktrust*. Read his last post for MyVoice and his first for Booktrust and you will find a passionate advocate for young people and the roles of reading and literacy (and libraries) in helping them develop their full potential. We have some of his books in stock here.

In The Crew, meet tough and street-smart Ellie, Jas, Della, Will and Billy. They're the Crew, and they live in what they call the Ghetto - the city centre estates where everyone is skint and it's important to stick together. One day they find a fortune in notes and life suddenly becomes very dangerous.

In Dream on Baljit is mad about football and dreams of playing for Liverpool, much to the disapproval of his parents, so when he is invited to trials at Leicester City, he has to lie about his whereabouts.

(Un)arranged marriage, set partly in the UK and partly in the Punjab region of India, is a perceptive and up-to-date glimpse into a young man's fight to free himself from family expectations and an arranged marriage that he rejects.

 

*PS talking of Booktrust, it has a recently revamped website which is worth looking at, especially the children's books and books for teens sites.

Crossing Over - titles with crossover appeal for both adults and young people

The previous post on Philip Pullman's nomination for the international Man Booker prize mentioned the crossover appeal of some of his titles. He is one of the authors on a new booklist we've produced, Crossing Over. With popular children’s titles such as the Harry Potter series and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time being published in alternative adult covers, the lines between publishing for teens and adults have become blurred. We’ve collected together some of the best titles with crossover appeal. Adults can enjoy the brevity and focus on storytelling of fiction originally conceived as being for children or teenagers, while older children or teens may find some of the classic titles a good way to expand into adult literature. You can access the list by clicking on the link above, or there are copies in the Library to collect.

YA fiction & JD Salinger

Two stories, but a connection. According to the Bookseller, YA (young adult) fiction sales topped £50m in 2009, but children’s fiction sales for eight to 11 years stood at £85.8m, down by over 13% in value and 9.57% in volume compared to 2008. The article discusses some of the possible reasons for this. Of course, one of the most famous YA books (although originally written for adults, it became popular with teenagers everywhere) is JD Salinger's Catcher in the rye, and his death was just announced - here are a couple of articles from the Herald and MSN's Today.

What do teens want?

In What do teens want Carol Fitzgerald details the results of the Teenreads.com 2009 Reader Survey. It covers a wide range of topics including what teenagers read, when they read, who influences them, use of social media and e-books. Points to bear in mind are that most of the 11-18 year-old respondents (87%) were from the US, the results reflect teens who are already drawn to books (they did not study what keeps nonreaders from picking up a book) and, while they purposely marketed the survey to attract male readers, the vast majority (96%) of returns were from female readers. However there is still a lot of useful information to be gleaned from the survey.