Book Trailers for K-12
"Creating a community of avid readers, one video at a time"
How do you select books to read? Do you use the jacket cover? Word of mouth? Reading lists? Which comes first, reading a book or watching a movie made from it? We do not believe it has to be an 'either-or' choice. Book trailers are short, two to three minute videos that introduce the basic storyline and in which the story is re-enacted with similar artistic and creative decisions made by a movie director as to what parts of the story are presented in a film he or she is creating.
So far we have posted 122 trailers, including trailers by COS Productions, selected K-12 students, and those created by emergent readers as a part of the Elise Leonard Series. We have also included links to additional trailers that were submitted by subscribers to the Newbie's Corner.
To find a trailer, just enter its exact title in the search box provided at the top right of this page. Alternatively, you may click on the Browse Books link in the Navigation Bar.
TEACHERS & PARENTS: If you register for this site, you will have full access to the UB the Director link at the top of this page, which provides our curriculum model, teaches how to visualize the books being read and how to utilize the story invention process to create your own video book trailers. We have currently attracted close to 3,000 subscribers worldwide who are teachers and parents just like you. This list is growing daily. Each week we are now receiving over 10,000 page hits and are attracting over 5,000 unique visitors from all over the world.
Video Book Trailers vs Digital Booktalk
There are many conceptualizations of video book trailers. In the business world, they are conceived of as commercials for the books created by book publishers or those hired by book publicists and authors to sell their books. Others are conceived of as digital 'book reports' that tell about a book using animations and other production techniques. While these trailers may serve well their commercial purpose, they often do not always accomplish the educational goal of creating avid readers.
Commercial conceptualizations of video book trailers are valid and have their place as they serve a valid and specific function: to sell specific books. But it is not what we envisioned over eight years ago when we invented the concept and coined the term Digital Booktalk. Our vision of booktrailers has always been to create opportunities for students to re-enact the main storyline of books they read, using live video clips, pictures, music, voice-overs and other digital tools. The original intent was to provide a means for reluctant and striving readers who had trouble visualizing what they were asked to read and help them make better choicesin slecting books from reading lists. As opposed to a commercial book trailer produced to entice a viewer to purchase a specific book, we do not care which book a student selects, as long as he or she simply selects one, completes it, and then uses that positive experience to find another of like genre, author, style, etc. We hypothesize from our own experience and from the research we have conducted that those viewing the trailers before reading books are actually experiencing a visual boost (i.e., head start) of sorts. This pre-visualization helps these reluctant and striving readers get the gist of the book's storyline to supplement and enhance the reading experience.
Like any other popular medium, some have re-purposed digital booktalks for their own use. Some believe that digital booktalks are simply video recordings of someone reading passages from books or telling viewers what the book is about.... in other words...'talking about the book' using digital media. While this is ok, it falls short of our original intent.Surely, any activity in which students create things adds to the learning experience. But we feel that the idea of re-enacting the plotline creates an experience not unlike the concept of Total Physical Response used in language learning.
The video book trailers posted on the main pages of this site remain consistent with our original goals. But because we have developed a user-centered community, other spin-off activities are sure to evolve. Those who become authors and editors of the Blogs will be able to create and post their extended discussin topics. We already have examples of these.
Visit the Blogs and Forums pages and you can participate in the creative evolution of this site.
