Patrick Carman’s “Dark Eden” is a multimedia offering, but even in its simple print form it is a compelling read about seven terrified teens in a backwoods adventure.

Illustration from the book “Dark Eden” by Patrick Carman. (Patrick Arrasmith, Harper Collins)

By Susan Carpenter, Los Angeles Times
November 13, 2011
Dark Eden

A Novel

Patrick Carman

Katherine Tegen Books: 316 pp., $17.99 ages 13 and up

The seven video screens in the new young adult thriller “Dark Eden” flicker in black and white — not only as described in the book’s text but through an accompanying downloadable app that plays out the story’s action in video snippets viewable on iPhones, iPods, iPads and Android devices. The back cover of the latest multimedia creation from bestselling author Patrick Carman also incorporates a QR code allowing potential readers to watch the ominously creepy “Dark Eden” trailer.

Is it a book? A film? An audio book? “Dark Eden” is all three — an effort on the author’s part to encourage reluctant readers to embrace the written word through technological enticements. But even in its humble print form, without any of the bells and whistles and gadgetry, “Dark Eden” is a compelling read that transposes the best aspects of classic horror storytelling onto a modern backwoods adventure reluctantly experienced by seven terrified teens.

Each of them suffers from a fear — of rabid dogs, rickety ladders, kidnapping. None of them understands why they’re so afraid, despite years of psychotherapy. So their doctor corrals them together, driving them deep into a wooded area somewhere on L.A.’s outskirts and dropping them off on a dirt trail, saying only, “A cure is waiting for each of you down that path.”

Their doctor refers to them as “The 7.” All of them are 15 years old. They’re a mix of hormone-addled boys and girls, some of whom are inevitably romantically involved. None had met before being packed into their doctor’s van. They’re panicked to discover their cellphones are out of service range and even more freaked that the first person they meet after an hour’s walk is Mrs. Goring — a crotchety old woman of indeterminate age whose first words of advice are: “Act like grown-ups and I won’t spit in your oatmeal.”

Mrs. Goring is one of just two people living at Fort Eden — a compound that consists of buildings notable only for their bunker-esque architecture and sturdy iron doors. Dr. Rainsford also lives on the premises, perfecting his cure for fear, though the details of how he does so are unclear.

Faced with looming darkness and a lack of survival skills, six of the kids venture into the appropriately named Fort, but Will Besting stays behind. Will, it turns out, is scared of people and finds comfort in technology, specifically the vintage video games he plays at home and the audio recording device he brought with him. The Recorder, as he calls it, was cobbled together from old iPods and digital cameras he bought on Craigslist and reassembled into a device he uses to record audio and video.

Readers can hear and watch what he’s recorded through the “Dark Eden” app, the first episode of which consists of shaky video footage of the teens’ walk through the woods and audio files of the seven’s psychotherapy sessions that Will surreptitiously downloaded from his doctor’s computer. The first episode is free. Subsequent chapters can be purchased for 99 cents apiece or in their entirety for $9.99.

While “Dark Eden” is written in a visual manner that easily conjures images on its own, experiencing the story through Will’s eyes and ears heightens the fear factor in a way that words alone cannot. It’s chilling to watch Will observe the treatments, which are conducted in basement rooms with metal helmets that wouldn’t be out of place in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” Hearing the seven’s interactions with their doctor makes the characters and their fears feel more relatable and real.

As befits a story taking place outside of L.A., all of the characters in the app are Hollywood-slick. And so are the video and audio production values, which amplify, rather than detract from, Carman’s inventive storytelling. “Dark Eden” is a fast-paced thrill ride that ends with big reveals about why the seven were taken to the Fort and subjected to Rainsford’s immersion therapy. Readers will need to wait until the second, and final, book in the series to find out if the fear cure actually works.

By Dennis Abrams

Patrick Carman is a traditional storyteller — the author of the bestselling YA series The Land of Elyon and Atherton, he’s also the creator of the popular and innovative 3:15 website, which uses a variety of media to encourage young readers to become interested in reading short stories.

And in his latest novel, Dark Eden, published this month by Katherine Tegen Books as an app for the iPad, Carman again pushes the boundaries of YA fiction by using text and video to tell the gripping story of seven young people forced to face their deepest darkest fears. Looking backwards, with references to Edgar Allen Poe, John Steinbeck and Kobo Abe, while exploring the future world of transmedia, Carman is very much a writer of and for our time.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Patrick via email, where we discussed transmedia, the desirability of book apps, and whether multimedia publishing can eventually lead young readers to Charles Dickens.

PP: Assume I’m a complete tech idiot — explain to me how the whole multimedia aspect of the book works and why I would want to do it.

PC: Dark Eden is designed to reach different kinds of readers. For traditional readers who prefer to read words, the book will give them exactly what they’re expecting (plus some amazing drawings from artist Patrick Arrasmith, who we were very lucky to have on the project). But I’m also interested in finding new ways of reaching very wired teens. And let’s be honest. Most of today’s teens are jacked in, wired up, and buzzing on tech throughout a normal day. The Dark Eden app tells the exact same story as the print edition; it just does it in a totally different way. With the app version, a participant enters into the story through a series of maps. Within those images are numbered icons that must be opened in order. There’s no way of knowing what’s behind the curtain of each number until they’re tapped, but every icon unlocks one of three things:

• An audio diary. With these, participants listen in on conversations taking place in the world of the story.
• A video, allowing participants to see firsthand what’s happening to certain key moments of the narrative.
• A journal entry. Taken directly from the book, the journal entries provide bite-sized reading segments.

I’ve had a lot of email on the app, and the overall viewpoint has been something along the lines of the following: I don’t know what I just did, but I liked it. So the Dark Eden app is extraordinary in that it’s a new palette. No story that I’m aware of has ever been told this way. It’s not a novel, it’s not an audio book, andit’s not a movie. It’s all three at one time. For some teen readers – the one’s publishing has lost in a rising tide of video games, movies, TV shows, the Internet, and cell phones — this is the kind of experience that will help them enjoy reading again. It’s a lifeline back to books, if you will. For traditional readers, it’s a new way to imagine what reading can be.

But given that, is there a risk that even though using multimedia encourages reading, it will lead to eventual disappointment when everything isn’t multimedia? Will going from you to, say, Dickens, be a letdown?

About half the books I write include zero multimedia, and that’s by design. My follow up to Dark Eden will be a traditional three book series for teens. If someone has experienced the Dark Eden app and liked it, maybe they’ll want to read the more traditional follow up by the same writer. So there is a strategy at play here, and its goal is to bring jaded young readers back to books. Having said that, in today’s kinetic tech culture, I think Dickens is a challenge for any teen reader. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but I’m convinced it’s the reality we faced as publishers, writers, and educators. Saying it’s not so won’t make it true, and we have to evolve in order to survive. Think of Dark Eden as a bridge to contemporary YA. The bridge to Dickens is a bit longer, but for some readers, that first step might lead to the streets of London in due time.

Given how Dark Eden changes what “reading” means, how does it change the writing process for you? Which comes first — the writing or the app?

I wrote the Dark Eden book first, but while I was writing, I was thinking about how it would become something else. When I finished the book, I worked with my director and writing partner to re-write the entire story for the app version. I’ve done this before with other projects like Skeleton Creek and Trackers and 3:15, and in every case, it’s a somewhat terrifying process to go through. The final document for the Dark Eden app was three inches thick, encompassing about 100 different assets that needed to be created. The hard thing about starting at a document like that is the uncertainty of it all. I stared at that binder of paper for a long time and wondered if it would all come together and form an experience as strong as the traditional book. There’s no way of knowing when you’re doing something that no one has ever tried. The only way out is to keep going, keep building, and always keep the basics top of mind: is this clear, is it compelling, do I want to follow these characters? I think the Dark Eden app works, I’m satisfied. Time will tell us whether participants feel the same way.

I downloaded the app for 3:15, and was fascinated by the way in which you transformed the basic short story into an audio introduction/text middle/video at the end experience. Can you tell me a little about it came about? And again, are you concerned that readers will grow up expecting all their texts to be like this and won’t be satisfied with simply reading a story?

The strategy with 3:15 is the same as everything else we’ve been talking about here. I love short stories, but they’re not very popular among teens and pre-teens (and actually, not very popular among adults, either). I was reading a short story a year ago by Flannery O’Connor and when I got done, I was a little bit angry. Why don’t more people read this stuff!? Why is this powerful experience being missed? 3:15 came out of that frustration as I began thinking about how short stories could be re-imagined for a new readership. The Twilight Zone informed the structure, because I thought having a host for a series of stories would help draw young readers into the experience. It was shortly after that I decided that it would pull in readers even faster if they could actually hear the host introduce the story, and thus Paul Chandler was born. At this point I’m hoping I’ve earned ten minutes of reading out of a twelve or thirteen year old, because I’m also offering a payoff — they get to watch how the story ends. All of this thinking came together perfectly in the series title, 3:15. The three stands for listen, read, and watch, and you do it all in fifteen minutes or less. For a young reader, this is an enticing bargain, but again, the endgame isn’t 3:15. My desire is that they move on to Chris Crutcher, Holly Black, Jonathan Strahah, and a host of other writers creating traditional short stories for teens.

How did your desire to go multimedia start?

Ten years in advertising and five running an internet start-up in the first .com boom certainly played a part. I was hard-wired to break the rules before I showed up in publishing. My experiences in those industries had a lot to do with making new rules in order to be heard, noticed, and taken seriously. I side with the late Steve Jobs here: the people who are doing things no one else thinks will work are taking the biggest risks and have the best chance of creating real change. I’m not a genre-maker or a category builder — vampires, dystopian, what have you — I’m a palette changer. I’m watching where kids and teens are going and building new storytelling methods that will meet them where they’re at. The ultimate goal is to discover ways to make reading relevant in an increasingly noisy world. But to be clear, I don’t think all books should be brimming with multimedia. That would be a tragedy! These projects are designed to re-introduce reading to an audience that doesn’t think reading fiction can be enjoyable. In a perfect world, a teen experiences the Dark Eden app and it puts them back in the reading for pleasure game. The next story they pick up, I hope is in the form of a traditional novel. Last disclaimer: there are plenty of teen readers reading normal books. Bravo, young readers! But let’s be honest with ourselves as adult readers and writers: there are a lot of teenagers who simply do not read for pleasure. It’s off their radar. I’m trying to win them back.

[Personally] I’m inspired by great stories, and I’ll admit to not caring what form they take. A season of great TV (Mad Men, The Good Wife, Battlestar Galactica), a riveting movie (The Matrix, Shine, Good Will Hunting), a video game (spend four bucks on LIMBO in the X-Box arcade and prepare to be wowed by a brilliant narrative), or a really good read (recent loves include The Lonely Polygamist and Freedom). It doesn’t matter to me. If I’m swept up in the world of the story, I’m pleased.

And this get to a bigger point I’d like to end on: no amount of tech wizardry will turn a bad story into a good one. My stories have to hold up, because a video might get a young reader in, but they’ll cut and run as fast as they can turn a channel on a TV if the story isn’t any good and the characters are flat. In fact, I think the stakes are even higher with multimedia. Who of us have not seen a special effects powerhouse that we forget ten seconds after leaving the theater? The palette may have changed in some cases, but the job is still the same. Dark Eden, whether it’s consumed as a traditional book or a multimedia app, has to deliver on the promise of a great story. I hope I’ve succeeded on both cases!

Ages: 13 and up
Illustrated by:
ISBN: 9780062009708
Price: $$17.99

Published By HarperCollins Children’s Books

Read The Original Post

Originally posted at www.publishersweekly.com

By Sally Lodge

Seven teenagers with crippling secrets and phobias travel to an eerie, mysterious place in hopes of finding a cure in Dark Eden, a novel and multimedia app by Patrick Carman. Published by Katherine Tegen Books on November 1, this psychological thriller was launched with a fittingly fright-themed marketing campaign that involved a “Fear Test” for teens to assess the source of their fears. The multiple-choice test is available online as well as on a CD-ROM that was distributed—along with other branded giveaways—at such venues as haunted houses, corn mazes, family gaming centers, and bookstores during the Halloween season. Pre-pub buzz for the novel was also generated by a 20-site blog tour, on which Carman offered guest posts and sneak peeks of Dark Eden’s multimedia components.

Patrick Carman. Photo:
www.kimberlyink.com.

Carman, whose earlier projects combining print and digital content include Skeleton Creek and 3:15, notes that Dark Eden offers teens the chance to experience the story in two distinct ways. “The idea is to reach every kind of reader,” he explains. “The book itself is a straight read, with no technology involved. If another kind of reader wants to experience the story through the multimedia app, they can unlock journal entries, audio recordings, and videos that tell the entire story from beginning to end in a different format. It’s kind of like having the book and movie come out at the same time.” Dark Eden‘s digital components are compatible with the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Android-enabled devices.

Released with an announced first printing of 100,000 copies, Dark Eden has been named a Winter 2011-2012 Kids’ Indie Next Pick. Katherine Tegen, the novel’s editor, calls the multimedia app’s combination of a game with short segments of text from the novel, “innovative and brilliant,” and the ideal way to snag today’s teens, who she notes “live on their phones. Teens who like to read—and teens who don’t—will be totally hooked by the app. Even though I know the story extremely well, every time I watch a segment of the app, I am totally transfixed by the multimedia experience of that same story.”

Branded banners were distributed to venues
nationwide, such as this haunted house in Seattle.

The publisher and Carman’s PC Studio joined forces to create what Tegen labels “the best viral campaign I’ve ever seen,” noting that the blog tour, organized by HarperCollins’s publicity department, resulted in “a stunning number of amazing blog reviews and online buzz.” She says that the haunted house partnerships and the Fear Test developed by PC Studio “like the app, employ real guerilla marketing tactics to reach teens where they live. Patrick deployed his ardent teen fans across the country to tag public places with “thefeartest.com” stickers. The teens were encouraged to take photos of their tags and five teens won prizes—signed books by Patrick—for the best photos.”

The promotional partnership with haunted houses and other Halloween-themed attractions enabled Carman and his team “to get the book in front of a lot of teens at one time,” he says. “Teens are really into haunted houses this time of year, and we pretty rapidly got a number of venues on board. It was a win-win situation, since we were able to draw teens into the world of Dark Eden, and the haunted houses were able to offer teens something that others were not.”

Two of the haunted houses that participated in the project are owned by Clear Channel Seattle, and each is sponsored by one of the company’s Seattle radio stations, KUBE 93 and 106.1 KISS FM. “Kids ages 13 to 15 make up the sweet spot demographically for these haunted houses, and that is right on the money in terms of Dark Eden’s target audience,” explains account executive Casey Anderson. “We integrated some pretty creative elements into our haunted houses, including stenciling scenes on the wall that related to the book. To pique curiosity for the book, we also handed out wrist bands and CDs, and ran some 15-second radio spots the last two weekends in October to tie it all together. It was a great strategy, and we feel good about the positive connection to reading.”

Fear Test stickers were sent to fans with instructions
to tag and photograph their handiwork.

Through these seasonal attractions and bookstores, 40,000 CD-ROMs featuring the Fear Test and some 100,000 wrist bands touting Dark Eden have been distributed to teens. Other giveaways include lanyards and bookmarks. HarperCollins, which has created a Web site for the novel, continues its marketing campaign throughout November with online consumer advertising for a total number of 2.4 million impressions, as well as mobile advertising at MillenialMedia.com.

Carman’s follow-up novel, Eve of Destruction, will be released by Katherine Tegen Books in May and will also have a multimedia app component. With its multimedia platform, this two-book series embodies Carman’s mission as author. “This orientation is crucial to me,” he says. “I’ve visited more than 1,400 schools, and of course there are always plenty of kids who read, but the percentage is not very high. If there is any way to throw kids a lifeline to reading, I am always looking to do that.”

by Patrick Carman

Whenever I speak to a group of middle school students, I run the same simple test. I ask the audience to think about the day before I arrived. Only that one day. Then I have them count on their fingers each of the following things they did the day before I got there:

• Used a cell phone
• Used a personal device to listen to music (iPod Touch, smartphone, tablet, etc.)
• Watched TV
• Played a video game
• Went online

Then I ask if anyone in the audience can give me a high five.

What’s astonishing to me is the regularity with which I find at least 70 percent of the audience laughing and waving back at me, all five fingers splayed out so they’re sure I’ll notice (Who says girls don’t play video games? Farmville and other social games like it have made sure they do). When I ask for a high four, I’m getting better than 80 percent participation. Three fingers gets me to 99 percent.

I keep asking myself a question in these situations (I hope the librarians and teachers in the room are asking it, too): when these kids leave school, are they also reading every day? And if they are, how big would the reading slice of pie be compared to, say, posting on Facebook, listening to music, and texting their friends? I’m increasingly convinced that I’m staring at a pie where 90 percent of the slices are cut up into non-reading forms of entertainment and social media.

When I started touring in early 2003, the only people at middle schools who had cell phones were the adults. I had the advantage of being on the ground at hundreds of schools, day in and day out, at the beginning of a sea change: I could see the wave building and feel the power of what was about to crash onto school campuses. Today the vast majority of middle school students carry mobile devices, and not just phones; iPod Touches and laptops have also become commonplace among tweens and teens.

At some point—I think around 2007—I found myself standing in too many gymnasiums talking to kids who were spending far more time consuming entertainment through technology than they were reading. And the really big wave hadn’t even hit yet.

After years of serious contemplation on the road (and an entire set of Michelins for my Camry), an answer—at least my answer—began to form: stop trying so hard to stand out. It was a scary conclusion, one that would require a completely new way of thinking about what a book could be. What many ultra-wired kids needed was a pathway back to books. They needed someone to take two steps toward them before they could take one step in the direction of reading.

My “blending in” experiment began with Skeleton Creek, a project that started simply enough: I would make a book and a movie at the same time. I’d ask tweens and teens to read 20 pages, then I’d send them online to unlock a video that would deliver part of the story. Back and forth we’d go, nine times in total, and at the end they’d have read 200 pages.

“I’ve heard the same statement in one form or another from hundreds of different teachers and librarians when they talk about the emergence of multimedia books: kids who weren’t reading are reading again. They’re coming back.”

I soon discovered that innovation is a messy business filled with long stretches of doubt, countless false starts, and a constant black cloud of indecision. There was no road map to follow, no guarantee that a story told this way would result in anything more than a pile of broken parts. All I could do was hold onto the same question at the start of every day and hope it would guide me to the right decisions:

What will make distracted kids turn more pages?

Well, I think I may have gotten a little bit lucky. I still believe the entire story could have gone off the rails at any moment (it sure felt that way right up to the end). But 10 million videos watched by over a million different kids has me convinced that we can win back lost readers if we make the critical decision to meet them halfway.

I’ve heard the same statement in one form or another from hundreds of different teachers and librarians when they talk about the emergence of multimedia books: kids who weren’t reading are reading again. They’re coming back.

But what are they coming back to? Is it reading or something else? To answer that question we need a definition for transmedia, a buzzword catching on across all entertainment media.

Transmedia, as I define it for the work I do in publishing, is a project that uses multiple platforms to create one seamless story through: the written word, video, audio diaries, illustrations, websites, apps, and social media. But transmedia is an evolving concept. It can just as easily describe a book series that’s been made into a movie or a TV show. Or maybe the series simply has a really cool website.

In case those of us in publishing are interested in how Hollywood defines it, I asked Nick Harris, co-head of media rights at ICM, the big talent agency. “Transmedia,” he responded, “must utilize different media to create a single universe in which multiple storylines and characters can exist and evolve for an interactive audience experience.”

While it may be a difficult thing to pin down, one thing’s for sure: transmedia by any reasonable definition will play a critical role in the future of books.

As a storyteller, I’m enjoying the move to less traditional methods of finding readers, in part because—I’ll be honest—it’s kind of fun doing creative stuff with other people. Writing words is a magical, solitary pursuit, but there’s a lot to be said for building a story in tandem with a director, actors, programmers, game designers, and artists.

So where does the path go from here? I’m happy to say it leads in many directions. More and more writers are starting to experiment with different ways of reaching into a wired world and reconnecting kids to books. The 39 Clues blends adventure, trading cards, and online games into a jet-fueled reading experience kids are embracing. That series alone has brought nine bestselling writers under the multimedia tent, including Rick Riordan. And notable authors like Jon Scieszka and Michael Grant have also created multimedia reading experiences that are picking up steam.

As for me, I’m actively forging ahead into more uncharted territory. With www.315stories.com I’m attempting to re-invent the short story for distracted readers. I’m asking young readers to listen, read, and watch in 15 minutes or less. Are they going to listen to a one-minute audio introduction? I think they will. Are they going to watch a spooky two-minute video at the end? Totally. But the story won’t make any sense if they don’t do the important part in the middle, which will involve reading for 10 to 12 minutes.

I’ve also just released Dark Eden, a traditional YA novel for teens who love a big, dark, paranormal world. But if they’d rather experience the same story in the form of a multimedia app, they have that option, too. The app version of Dark Eden tells the same story through words, maps, audio diaries, videos, and slide decks. Crazy? Probably. But I’m convinced we should be creating books for every kind of reader—traditional, ultra-wired, and everything in between.

I spend about half my time writing conventional novels, the other half exploring new ways to engage a different kind of reader. So I guess, in a sense, I’ve answered my own question.

Can reading make the top five every day for every kid?

It can if we spend a little less time trying to stand out and a little more blending in.

Author Information

Patrick Carman is the author of many acclaimed bestselling series for children and young adults, including Skeleton Creek, Trackers, Thirteen Days to Midnight, and Dark Eden.

Patrick Carman, young adult author from Walla Walla, Washington, has done it again! Following his two most recent young adult hit multi-media series, Skeleton Creek, and Trackers where teens experience the story through traditional storytelling and by watching part of the tale on the computer, Carman has found yet another way to capture his “wired” readers’ attention through the use of Microsoft Apple and Droid devices.

Wired Readers

What is a “wired” reader? A “wired” reader is a kid who likes to experience storytelling through the use of technology. Patrick Carman explains that there are five components in the lives of our young readers today that distract them from reading books: TV, video games, the internet, cell phones, and iPods. It has become Carman’s purpose as an author to get those readers back by meeting them halfway: Connecting technology to traditional storytelling.

3:15 Stories

Spring of 2010, Patrick Carman launched his newest innovation called 3:15 Stories. Readers download the 3:15 Microsoft Apple or Droid app to their device, then purchase individual modernized Twilight Zone-like tales for less than $1.00 every two weeks. There are three parts to a 3:15 story: a two minute video introduction, 10 minutes of reading the body of the story, and a three minute video ending. It all takes just 15 minutes to complete the story. The first season’s 10 episodes will be published in a book to be released this October. For more information about the 3:15 stories go to www.315stories.com. These truly creepy stories will tantalize even the most resistant of readers and have them clamoring for more!

Coming Next: Dark Eden

What are you afraid of?
“What is Pat working on now?” Well, I can tell you that it’s even bigger and better than the 3:15 Stories, Dark Eden. In this novel, and through narrator Will Besting, Carman explores the idea that we all have fears with the question, “What would a person give up in life to cure these fears?” Will is terrified of people and can only be around family. Like the author, himself as a teen, Will is anxious when among his peers. So he witnesses and reports from afar what the other characters are going through. Will records audio files, video files, journal entries, and photographs and the readers experience the story through these methods of storytelling.
In August of 2011, readers can download the free app and purchase each chapter for $0.99. The first segment will be free, then the remaining chapters will become available one each week for 14 weeks. After the eighth segment, the published book will then be released and readers can choose to buy the book to finish the story immediately, or wait five more weeks to experience the end of the novel on their MP3 device.
Harper is working on an enhanced e-book version for both Nook and Kindle that will be available in November.
Electronic or Traditional?
Carman explains that a big challenge when brewing up a story is deciding whether the story is more conducive to being a traditional novel or a multi-media novel. “Only certain stories work with multi-media. Video and audio [components] have to be there for a reason…there’s a believability factor.” To write a good multi-media novel the author really needs to “pre-think the idea and then tackle the multi-media facets piece by piece”. Tackling the multi-media aspect of his novels has been easier with the creation, five years ago, of his own film studio in Walla Walla (PC Studio) where he hired a full time director and editor, Jeffrey Townsend, and a full time web master, plus 15 – 30 part time people as needed to produce such multi-media works as the Skeleton Creek series, Trackers, The 3:15 Stories, and now Dark Eden. Carman enjoys being a part of all creative aspects of his stories and most of all working closely with other creative minds: the director, the actors, the webmaster, etc. When asked how kids can get involved in telling stories in non-traditional ways, Pat suggests, “It’s easy to pick up a camera…easy to get creative with the tools that are available to kids today. Go out and find two or three buddies and just do it. Collaborating in a group is more fun and you tend to come up with better ideas when you work together as a team. This is a great way for teens to cut their teeth on storytelling.”

Each book is a journal written by Ryan. Ryan lives in the small town of Skeleton Creek, and he and his friend Sarah have stumbled upon a mystery that almost killed Ryan. This mystery has both sinister elements and a large dose of conspiracy, and neither Ryan or Sarah are safe once the story begins.

So what makes this book different from most other mystery series for young adults? It’s the creepy online videos that Sarah (a budding video journalist) keeps emailing to Ryan. After every five to ten journal entries that Ryan puts down, readers find Sarah’s website address along with a password — visit the site, enter the password, and watch a video that ties the journal entries together. Ryan is trying to put the puzzle together with his own style of research, and Sarah simply jumps in with her video camera running and posts what she discovers.

I know… I’m being vague. I’m not telling you what the overall mystery is or what has happened to Ryan and Sarah to make them want to keep digging and putting their lives at risk. But I can assure you that Patrick Carman has created a mystery that is realistic, entertaining, and downright creepy.

How creepy? I don’t care if you’re 8 years old or 48, just watch the very first video by yourself, in the dark, late in the evening as I did. Scary movies don’t really bother me, but I jumped. Seriously jumped. That’s how drawn in I was from the first few journal entries and the video. And let me tell you… the videos don’t let up. You’ll meet residents of Skeleton Creek who may or may not have hidden agendas, you’ll return to some of the scariest places in Skeleton Creek over and over again… and you’ll need to examine sketches and sticky notes that can provide valuable clues to the mystery.

And just when you think you’ve got the story figured out… when book #1 is wrapped up and you’re feeling all safe and secure again? Ryan and Sarah have one final video that’s being broadcast live to the world as they attempt to solve the mystery. Want a hint at what happens? Click and drag your mouse pointer over the hidden sentence after this colon: It does not end well for Ryan and Sarah.

[Keep reading below for more details about the series — or stop if you don't want to ruin the experience of the follow-up books in the series. I'll try my best to avoid spoilers but I do want to explain how the series continues.]

And that’s book #1. And, yeah… things aren’t getting any better in Skeleton Creek. What I can tell you is that the real mystery in Skeleton Creek that starts in book #1 ends in book #2, Skeleton Creek: Ghost in the Machine. And the ending for book #2 will blow you away. Many more videos (a few that, again, caused me to jump) await the reader as well as even more clues for the reader to examine and try to figure out.

Book #3, Skeleton Creek: The Crossbones, picks up shortly after book #2 ends but things are much different for the main characters. Without giving away too much, let me just say that Sarah and Ryan now have some distance between them as well as a completely new mystery to solve and an old one that comes back to haunt them. And the fourth and final book in the series, Book #4, Skeleton Creek: The Raven, has just been released with both mysteries (yes, two of them now) from Books #1 to #3 wrapping up with… well… I just cannot say anything without spoiling something or giving some part of the story away. Just trust me… it’s awesome.

So, I’ll return to my initial statement about this series being great for those kids who avoid reading. (And for kids who loves to read? My guess is they’ll finish each book in a day or two… they’re that good.) Because most of the videos won’t make sense unless you read the journal entries, I’m betting parents will find this series to be of great interest to their difficult readers. The journal entries are typically short and fast, allowing readers to pop in a bookmark and continue later… if they can actually stop reading. The videos are fun… dark… twisted… and definitely spooky. Your kids will keep saying “Just one more entry…”

I purchased the first book for a nephew who enjoys reading… I sat down and read it to make certain it was going to be something he’d like. And after watching the very first video I knew it was going to be a hit. Right after I stopped laughing at myself for being such a scared-y cat, I told myself “Just one more entry…”

(If you enjoy this series, you’ll also like the Trackers series by Patrick Carman. It’s only two books into the series, but it follows a similar format of providing videos to go along with the story. I’ve enjoyed both books, but I have to say that the Skeleton Creek series is more my style.)

Read the rest here – www.wired.com/geekdad

ONTARIO – Ray Wiltsey Middle School staffers have started a two-week school-wide reading program designed to engage students in discussion and critical thinking.

As part of the program, which ends Tuesday, every seventh- and eighth-grader had to read the children’s fantasy and mystery novel “The Dark Hills Divide,” which was authored by Patrick Carman.

School officials have also asked community members to read to students for an hour every morning and take part in a class discussion, which includes summarizing chapters, discussing vocabulary as well as asking and answering questions.

“Literature plays a very important part in a child’s educational development,” Principal William Corrette said of the program that began April 25.

“Unfortunately, many students have not discovered the love of reading for pleasure. Sadly, a recent random survey of our students revealed that less than 30 percent remember having been read to by their parents or family members during their early childhood years.”

Corrette said assigned reading is a part of a student’s education experience, but research reflects children who are read to during their childhood years are more likely to be successful in school and become fluent readers.

During a read-aloud session late last month, Mac Wolfe, Colony High School’s assistant principal, read to an eighth-grade class of about 30 students.

He stopped reading after almost every paragraph to ask students if they understood what was happening in the books and explaining to them why details are important.

Down the hall, in another classroom, Michelle Stotts was asking her seventh-graders to describe the main character Alexa Daley.

“In the beginning Alexa is portrayed to be by her dad’s side, she was courageous but not mischievous,” Stotts said. “And that’s exactly how these kids are and I think that’s a connection to them of how they are in real life.”

According to a teaser on the book, “12-year-old Alexa is spending another summer in Bridewell with her father. She’s also eager to finally solve the mystery of what lies beyond the immense walls that were built to keep out an unnamed evil that lurks in the forests and The Dark Hills – an evil the townspeople are still afraid of.”

“It’s like as a teenager you’re always being held inside all the time with rules and boundaries and you have to go to school,” seventh-grader Imani Martin said. “But you want to explore things and (when) you’re at this age all you want to do is see what goes on in the outside world.”

Stotts said she hopes the novel inspires students who do not like to read to find a book that interests them.

“And, hopefully, this will open their minds to different things that are out there,” she said.

Ray Wiltsey Middle, which is part of the Ontario-Montclair School District, is at 1450 E. G St.

Read the rest here – www.contracostatimes.com

Read the rest here – www.choiceliteracy.com