Interactive Reading

What were your favorite books when you were in elementary school? Did you read anything which struck you as odd and memorable?

I have fond memories of reading books as a child.  Even though I can’t recall the plots of each book I read, I know I consumed the vast majority of a handful of series including Goosebumps, Mr. Men and Little Ms., Chronicles of Narnia, and  Choose Your Own Adventure. Sometimes I wonder where scenes from my dreams originate, and I almost suspect they are directly linked to the worlds (alternate realities)which I believed these stories existed in.

No, the point of this story is not just to reminisce, even thought it’s fun! Rather, I bring these books up to comment on how some types of experimental writing find their way into mainstream culture and are able to draw lots of readers or become a writing practice. Concrete poetry has done this, and so have other forms.

Visual poems highlight the page as a physical object which a reader must interact with. A special element of concrete poetry is its ability to change the manner in which the reader reads the words on the page. Typically, reading direction is from left to right and top to bottom, but concrete poems alter this format and leave the reader to surmise the proper reading sequence. (A technical note: the exploration of the complex interaction between a work and a reader is phenomenology.)

Choose Your Own Adventure books also work on the same premise, bringing attention to the form and involving the reader in a different way than a typical storybook.

Because they are story-length works, instead of selecting the order in which to read individual words or word groupings, these books ask readers to actively participate in selecting the next page to read.  I have no access to a legitimate English library, but if I did, I’d be in the kids section right now, reliving my childhood! (I’m such a nerd)