Introduction

As a middle school reading teacher, I often encounter those students commonly classified as "reluctant readers". For these students, reading is not the enjoyable, enriching experience that I know it to be. They will frequently express to me that reading is "boring" and that they would rather watch a film, view a television show, listen to music, browse the internet, etc. Finding ways to get these students interested in reading is a constant challenge (but also one of my favorite things about teaching).

For the past two years I have ended the school year by reading one of the Skeleton Creek books by Patrick Carman. If you are not familiar with these books, they are multimedia productions that include text, internet, and video components. Ryan, the protagonist of the book, keeps a written journal documenting the mysterious goings-on in his hometown of Skeleton Creek. This is the text portion of the narrative. Meanwhile, his partner-in-crime Sarah records video of her own investigations and sends Ryan passwords whereby he is able to view her video clips via an internet website. Thus the story is carried along through the text portion (Ryan's journal) as well as through video (Sarah's clips). Both years, this combination of medias has been a big hit with my students. After finishing them, I always have many students (including those aforementioned reluctant readers) asking to check out my copies of the other book in the series, or putting it on hold through our district library system.

As a future secondary school librarian, I am very interested in the ways teen and young adult literature and its modes of delivery continue to evolve, and the possibilities this creates to motivate reluctant readers. In this blog I would like to explore some of these "new directions" in teen and young adult reading.