New Methods: Appreciating InstaNovels and the art of story telling.

Consider NYPL’s launch of InstaNovels: digital novels presented through Instagram. In short, it is a graphic novel experience in an animated format. New stories and classics both in a new-wave format. At first, I scoffed, and then I reflected: my older son, now 13, struggled to find his way to reading anything half his lifetime ago. While other parents “humbly bragged” about how many books their little geniuses had devoured, I was struggling to get this kid away from Flat Stanley readers, which were, frankly, boring. And then DogMan (Dav Pilkey) arrived. At first, I hated it: endless comic strips of a dog policeman. But night after night my son devoured another DogMan… and then read it again and again until the next book arrived. He resonated with the graphics, which helped him understand the story, which, to my surprise, was actually far deeper than I was able to understand. How he was able to construct a full story from a few words here and there, along with pictures, was beyond me. He now loved reading, and he eventually moved to chapter books with the same devotion.

I was raised with classic stories: hard text, black-and-white. We slaved through Little Women, Jane Eyre, and Shakespeare alike. You had to do the work to appreciate the story. Though now a voracious reader, no assignment could have been more hateful to me than 50 pages of nightly reading homework. Ugh. But my son has joyfully gravitated from DogMan to Odysseus, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and other classics through newer, graphic presentations. He chooses these classics on his own volition, and through this novel storytelling graphic approach, he understands the stories far better than I ever did or likely ever will. He has embraced audiobook formats, where a lovely voice reads the heavy text of Gilgamesh to him while he follows along. Outside of school, he reads for enjoyment. During the school year, he uses the tools at his disposal to “get through it.” He comes away with appreciation and understanding, and more importantly: he wants more.

These new methods take of “ouch” and scorn out of assignments, and possibly encourage young readers to embrace tough text and antiquated language in a modern way. In short, they allow modern kids to interact with the stories told hundreds of years ago, connecting them to their own past. In the end, this is the point: stories. Human sharing. Commonality through this thing we call life. Stories toggle us to each other. Some of us love the simplicity of text on a page, letting the story unfold with each word while we paint a scene in our creative mind’s eye. Others dive-deep into a colorful world of shapes and words and colors to “hear” the story. Whatever your method, you are participating in an age-old art.

It has been said that girls read to understand how the world works; boys read to conquer it. We craft stories to explain our world. InstaNovels give readers another tool to participate in the human art of storytelling, story creating, understanding the world, and conquering it. Stories create commonality and community: by telling our stories we reduce divisions. In welcoming InstaNovels, libraries give different learners a different method for appreciating the same art of a good story and give place for us to continue tradition of story-sharing in a new format, encouraging a new generation to touch-back to the beginning of history’s written text and bring it forward.

The New York Public Library introduces classic literature to “Instagram stories” with Insta Novels. (2018, 22 August.) NYPL.org. https://www.nypl.org/press/new-york-public-library-introduces-classic-literature-instagram-stories-insta-novels