Breakfast Serials
A librarian explores a program through which dedicated readers are created week by week
By Leda Schubert -- School Library Journal, 12/1/2000
When I was a child, the Saturday afternoon matinee at the local theater was the place to be. The best part was the serial--the 15-minute western or space adventure that came before the feature. And the best part of the serial was the cliff-hanger ending; we'd talk about what might happen and whether the good guys would win next week as we came out into a sunny afternoon and walked home.
Those movie serials are long gone; however, thanks to a project called Breakfast Serials, the spirit lingers on. Before the movies, of course, serials enjoyed an illustrious history. Everybody knows that Charles Dickens's books were serialized in the mid-19th century, but Breakfast Serials founder Avi has traced serials back to 1727, when a Philadelphia newspaper ran Daniel Defoe's A Religious Courtship. Avi's willingness to take on new creative challenges is well known, and his own story, "Keep Your Eye on Amanda," inaugurated Breakfast Serials in 1996. The purpose of the project is to serialize good writing for young people in newspapers, and some of our best children's authors have taken up the challenge of creating stories that are short, suspenseful, and that stick in readers' minds from chapter to chapter. Writers who have participated so far include Avi, Joseph Bruchac, Nancy Garden, Liza Ketchum, Betty Miles, and Katherine Paterson.
A key to the success of Breakfast Serials is its partnership with Newspapers in Education, an organization that works with schools to bring real-world applications to classroom instruction. Linda Wright, Avi's partner in the project, reports that Breakfast Serials is now working with over 230 newspapers, large and small, with a potential audience of 38 million readers. While newspapers must pay to carry the series, rates are reasonable, and are scaled according to circulation. For the papers, it's a way to find and cultivate new readers and to become advocates for community literacy; papers carrying the series have reported amazing jumps in circulation and classroom use. The Patriot Ledger in Massachusetts reports that school circulation jumped from 10,000 to 90,000 when Ketchum's "Orphan Journey Home" was running, and the Tribune in Mesa, AZ, sold an extra 8500 papers each time Paterson's "The Field of the Dogs" was the feature. Seventy percent of Maine's libraries ordered the Bangor Daily News last summer when Miles's "The Army of Two" was running. In Vermont, where I live, the Rutland Herald surveyed readers and learned that 97 percent would like to see another story, and the survey generated the largest number of respondents in the history of the newspaper.
Newspapers have used the stories in different ways, and many have developed creative methods of involving readers. The stories themselves are about half of a newspaper sheet, and run for 8 to 16 weeks. Papers have devoted additional space to T-shirt contests, library-card incentives, book suggestions from local librarians, syndicated columnists, sidebars with information about the author and illustrator, activities and discussion questions, etc. The papers are often provided free to participants, and for schools, there are often teacher guides and activities to involve readers. Several of the writers mentioned that it has been both gratifying and unusual to receive so much publicity, since publishers' advertising budgets are rarely so lavish. Paterson reports that "The Field of the Dogs" ran in about 100 papers and that she received calls from most of them; the papers then featured an interview and photo. She comments that she got more publicity for her Breakfast Serial than for winning the Newbery Medal.
Writers have experienced an extraordinary response from readers as well. For example, Ketchum, whose "Orphan Journey Home" is set partially in Kentucky, was thrilled when she visited schools in Lexington, where kids basically "went bananas" over it. Classes created model frontier towns, kids built rafts, the public-radio station aired installments, and a dedicated teacher transcribed the story into braille so that her blind students could follow along. The Kentucky Herald-Leader published 30,000 extra copies each day the story appeared. Ketchum was also able to meet with teachers to discuss the teaching of writing.
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With Breakfast Serials, no one has the edge: parents, teachers, and the best readers don't know more than the slower readers, and everyone has to wait for the next installment. |
Adult readers are enjoying the serials, too, according to Linda Wright. Writers have found they're perfect for grandparents looking for stories to share with grandchildren, new adult readers, and ESL students. Paterson notes that when she visited her optometrist, the nurse asked, "What's going to happen next?" But children remain the primary audience, and their enthusiasm is notable. Nancy Garden writes: "I suspect that the fact that there's nothing very formidable-looking about a single short chapter in a newspaper--as opposed to a bunch of chapters bound together in a book--has something to do with it." When Garden spoke in Colorado schools about "The Secret of Smith's Hill," which is about a present-day family that is haunted by a poltergeist who died of a broken heart during the American Revolution, she was greeted with a colonial breakfast, a chart of story elements, classroom artwork for each chapter, and a skit based on the story. Garden writes: "In two schools, plus a local furniture warehouse where there was a Saturday-morning program involving a clown, me, and some 200 children eager for autographs, the kids asked perceptive questions and were among the most excited audiences with which I've ever worked. It's so exciting, too, to see the variety of ways in which teachers have presented the story: as a vehicle for teaching the elements of fiction and/or of mysteries; to teach literary analysis; to encourage the reading of similar stories, as reading practice; to inspire artwork; to prompt the writing and telling of personal experiences similar to those in the story; to discuss the American Revolution--and, yes, to practice writing letters to authors! One enterprising teacher even took his class to a cemetery, had them design gravestones, and swapped ghost stories with them."
All of the writers I spoke with thought the stories seemed to find children who weren't dedicated readers. There is often instant feedback: readers ask questions about details in the stories while they're still running; they help writers find weak points; they may even participate in the revision of the story for publication as a book. Liza Ketchum sees Breakfast Serials as a more cooperative, interactive project than much of her writing. When she got the call to develop a story, she had no idea how different it would be. Students wanted to know more about details in the story such as "milk fever" or where a character got his crutch--details that hadn't originally been included because of space limitations of the newspaper format. Her book, Orphan Journey Home (Avon, 2000), has recently been published, and her "Note to Readers" provides fascinating detail about this interactivity.
Paterson's story seemed initially to suffer from rotten timing, according to the author: it is a story that features guns, and it ran during the Columbine shooting. There were several requests for her to change the ending, and a few papers considered stopping the story. Instead, teachers called the papers requesting them to continue, commenting that it provided the "teachable moment" they had hoped for. Conversations with students revolved around the complex issues that emerged, and teachers felt they could trust Paterson to deal responsibly with difficult subjects.
Each Breakfast Serials chapter needs to provide reasons for readers to return for the next one. Nancy Garden reports that one group of kids wrote to her about the ending of "Smith's Hill," which they thought wasn't as exciting as the rest of the story. "Their comments have made me analyze the story again in order to understand what happened and to figure out how I might have been able to avoid it… All in all, working on my Breakfast Serials story and following the responses to it has been and still is both instructive and tremendously rewarding, especially because it has put me in touch with a readership I don't think I've reached before, at least not in such large numbers. And there's nothing more satisfying to a children's writer than helping to show kids that reading is fun, which when all is said and done, seems to be the basic reaction to the Breakfast Serials stories!"
With Breakfast Serials, no one has the edge: parents,
teachers, and the best readers don't know more than the slower readers,
and everyone has to wait for the next installment. All readers can
discuss the stories and pre-
dict what might happen. The stories are not available
in book form (for a specified time) or on the Internet. They truly create a
huge community of readers, combat illiteracy, level the playing field,
and make new readers week by week.
Breakfast Serials:
Avi's "Keep Your Eye on Amanda," illustrated by Janet Stevens, and "Amanda Joins the Circus," illustrated by David Wisniewski, are both inspired by midnight visits from raccoons. Single volume versions of both stories have been published (Avon, 1999) with illustrations by David Wisniewski.
Joseph Bruchac's "The Black Squirrel," illustrated by David Fadden, in which Mac embarks on a hero's journey when characters from his grandmother's Abenaki stories begin to appear.
Nancy Garden's "The Secret of Smith's Hill," illustrated by Marilynne K. Roach.
Liza Ketchum's "Orphan Journey Home," illustrated by C. B. Mordan, is based on a true story and tells of four children's journey from Illinois to Kentucky to reach their grandmother in 1828.
Betty Miles's "The Army of Two," illustrated by Joan Sandin, also based on a true story, is about two young girls who save their town from invasion by the British in 1814.
Katherine Paterson's "The Field of the Dogs," illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully, blends fantasy and realism: Josh Williamson's troubles adjusting to a family move from Virginia to Vermont include a snowy winter, a class bully, and wild dogs that Josh seems to hear talking.
Coming soon: Avi's "The Secret School," illustrated by Brian Floca, and set in rural Colorado in the 1920s, and Ji Li's "The Monkey King," a partial retelling of a trickster tale from the Ming dynasty.
For more info, contact Breakfast Serials at reader@@
rmi.net, or 859 South York St., Denver, CO 80209 (303-777-0538).
Leda Schubert is the School Library Consultant for the Vermont Department of Education.
