How to use this Page

(Oh hey, check out this new Oliver Jeffers’ Heart And The Bottle app!)

Everyone – and I mean, EVERYONE (that’s right, NPR) – is talking about e-books and new media.  While adult e-readers are already a major part of consumer culture, childrens’ apps and e-books are still in their infancy (pun intended).  People seem to have a special concern and defensiveness reserved for the future of kids’ books – after all, who wants their kids’ future reduced to bedtime stories curled up with an IPad?

Most industry professionals and consumers alike agree that traditional children’s books aren’t going anywhere.  For one, buying a two-year-old a Color Nook is a lot less cost-efficient than a $4.99 board book, if all the toddler’s going to do is chew on the corners.  For another, people like the visceral experience of buying a hardcover book and turning its pages, reading aloud themselves instead of pressing a button.

Instead, we’re heading towards more and more options for kids books, and while we adults will have to nervously or excitedly adapt, kids will grow up expecting content on myriad forms of media.

So I commend SCBWI’s Illustrators’ Intensive for making the focus of their annual NYC event “Beyond Books: Picture Books and the New Media“.  Hey, if we don’t know about it, let’s invite some panelists to tell us about it!

As excited as I was about hearing the “Online Presence: A Panel Review of Websites, Blogs and Social Media”, it wasn’t my focus of the day.  Mostly, I was there to hear about the latest digital development shrouded in mystery: apps.  It’s something we all know is the future (SO much cooler than e-books), but we don’t REALLY know how they’re created.  First off, we sat in on the “Development of Apps from Classics” discussion, with panelists Virginia Duncan of Greenwillow Books (HarperCollins) and Colin Hosten of Hyperion/Disney Digital Books.

Ms. Duncan explained the making of Greenwillow’s first app, Freight Train by Donald Crews.  With bold shapes and different views from its companion book, Inside Freight Train, this was a perfect way to get an introduction to all that can be done with an app. Take a simple story, then add movement, games, songs… the sky’s the limit!  Check out storyboards and other making-of tidbits from Freight Train here.

Now, say what you want about Disney’s creepy corpo

Here is part 2 of the The Amanda Project with Marketing Director, Ariel Aberg-Riger. Y0u can also review Part 1.

Note: This is a 2 part series. Comment on Part 1 or 2 to be entered into a random drawing for one of two books of Invisible 1 (book 1 of The Amanda Project). You must be a follower and in the US to win. The book drawing for both books will be tonight so you must comment by 12 PM EST


What was it like for the author to allow the shaping a story left to the readers? Do you find the storylines completely different or similar?

Well, our authors did what they do best which is create compelling characters and a riveting story. We just created a framework that allows our community to supplement their vision. Each book is written by each author in a fairly traditional manner, and the authors all worked together to establish an overarching plot structure for the eight books (a HUGE hat tip to our amazingly talented editorial director for keeping track of everything!). It is the details of Amanda's world that are flexible, and ever-growing, as our community of readers and writers adds to what the authors have created.


How has The Amanda Project evolved over time?

We're still really young! The site only officially launched last August, and Invisible I came out in October. We've definitely responded to our community's wants (the addition of the Zine section on the site came out of our beta testers' comments), and we are developing some additional features which we hope to launch this summer, but overall we are still in our infancy!


How did you draw in your initial readers? What marketing did you use to get the project started?

We started testing the website in beta about six months before the first book in the series - Invisible I - hit stores. Our initial beta testers came from a call we put out via the Fourth Story Media website, along with a number of teens from HarperCollins/HarperTeen' ARC early reviewers lists. We knew even before we started that our most hardcore members would be girls who loved to read and write, so we went after voracious readers to test the site. We used the beta testing period to really talk to our testers and find out what they loved and what they wanted more of. Before the site went live (last August - about a month before the first book came out), we made a number of changes based on our beta's feedback.

After building and energizing a small core of super Amanda enthusiasts during beta, we then equipped them with the tools to go out and bring their friends on

Guest blogger Lisa Holton is the CEO of Fourth Story Media, a new media company that tells stories that unfold across books, the web, mobile phones, and other forms of media. Fourth Story Media’s first series – The Amanda Project - is now live, and the first book Invisible I hit stores last month.

I grew up in traditional children’s publishing, and have had the privilege of working with many extraordinary authors, illustrators, editors and designers–the small villages that create beautiful books. I love books. I love the way they look on the shelf and the way they feel in your hands. I love the physical act of reading–curling up on the couch with a great read, and losing yourself in the story. Many kids feel the same way, and thanks to First Book, many more kids are getting the opportunity to experience reading their own books every day.

Over the last several years, I spent a great deal of time thinking about how our readers interact with technology in profoundly different ways than we do. With each new generation, that relationship becomes more pronounced. I started asking myself, how do we keep traditional book publishing alive and thriving in this age? Is there a way to marry our art forms to online and digital media in a way that makes sense to readers? It was out of these ideas and some encouragement from friends and colleagues–most notably Lorraine Shanley and Ariel Aberg-Riger–that Fourth Story Media was born.

Our first series is a mystery for teens about an enigmatic girl named Amanda Valentino who shows up at Endeavor High School one Halloween, and disappears the following spring. The story is told by different YA authors–kicked off by Melissa Kantor, author of Invisible I– across an 8-book series (being published by HarperCollins) as well as an interactive website where we invite readers to log on and actually become a character in the story. On the website – www.theamandaproject.com – they create character profiles, write in their characters voice, debate clues, and submit art. We continuously weave in their contributions both online (within the weekly stories we publish), as well in the books themselves (the first book includes a beautiful essay written by Lisa Sturm – a 17-year-old from Texas, and one of our first members, who dreams of someday becoming a published author!).

Like many ideas, The Amanda Project came out of a bunch of different, seemingly disparate threads. We were interested in inviting talented authors to collaborate on an ongoing narrative; we wanted to see if we could publish a story that would allow interactivity and reader participation, and we were thinking about how girls use technology to express themselves.

So far, our readers have been AMAZING in their participation. They are completely immersing themselves in Amanda’s world, and constantly submitting really impressive writing and art. If anything, we are continuously searching for additional avenues we can give them to create. For example, after a six-month period of beta testing in which we worked with a small group of about 100 girls, we added a new section to the site called The Zine where our readers can post and submit their writing to share with the community and receive feedback.

We’re also working with teachers and librarians to develop ways that The Amanda Project can be used as a creative reading and writing tool in classrooms. At www.theamandaidentitykit.com you can download resources (including discussion questions, lesson plans, and templates) to use with your students and young readers.

We’re always looking for feedback, ideas, thoughts, and comments. Feel free to get in touch – either in the comments here, or at [email protected] – and let us know what you think!

'Twilight' returns to theaters (on November 19th, allowing fans to watch the first chapter of the Twilight saga one more time before"New Moon" comes out the following day. Plus in Forks, Washington a vampire-themed restaurant has plans to... Read the rest of this post