Seattle P.I. – Patrick Carman's print-video hybrid targets readers for a digital age 2009

The video didn’t load?Oops.Author Patrick Carman, in Seattle to visit schools and bookstores, threw a sweat shirt over his 6-foot-4-inch frame and ducked outside to call his tech elves back in Walla Walla.They solved the problem posthaste — and a good thing, because video is integral to Carman’s new multimedia book, a children’s ghost mystery called “Skeleton Creek.”At 43, with two adolescent daughters of his own, the charismatic author is targeting a generation of digital natives known more for spending time with “hand on mouse” than “nose in book.”He’s luring them with a new kind of storytelling that’s a bit like the Old Spice centaur — two things in one. “Skeleton Creek” is a book, but it’s also an online movie. And, like the centaur, it needs both halves to function, which sets it apart from the usual online book spinoffs.With a “Skeleton Creek” sequel due out in September and another multiplatform series in the works, Carman and publishing giant Scholastic Inc. say they’re promoting reading by pushing the boundaries of how we define a book.”Mixing media is a way to bring kids back to books,” said Carman, who describes his hybrid creation as a form of “book evangelism.”Author of the best-selling “Land of Elyon” fantasy series, the boyish writer is a former advertising entrepreneur whose knack for storytelling and promotion helped pluck him from the obscurity of self-publishing.In the past five years he has visited 622 schools — and he says it was those visits that alerted him to the rapid inroads interactive media have made into preteen life.At first he never saw young kids with cell phones. Suddenly they were everywhere, and kids — his daughters included — were texting and trailing earbuds and doing homework, all at the same time. Interactive media had become the white noise of their generation, and Carman wanted in.”Whether adults like it or not — or are comfortable with it — that’s the world we live in,” he said.Authors Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman flirted with interactivity in 2006 with “Cathy’s Book: If Found, Call (650) 266-8233,” a teen novel that included phone numbers and Web sites readers could access.Scholastic heightened the multiplatform concept last fall with “The 39 Clues,” a 10-part, multi-author series (Carman is writing book five) that uses clue cards, an online game and contests to extend the text.”Skeleton Creek” ups the ante by treating interactive elements not as an add-on, but an integral part of the story. The tale revolves around two teens, Sarah and Ryan, who have encountered ghostly doings during their nighttime exploration of an abandoned dredge — an earth-chewing machine once used for extracting gold.As we learn from Ryan’s journal — the “book” portion of “Skeleton Creek” — Ryan was injured in a mysterious fall at the dredge and his parents have barred him from further contact with Sarah. (As if.)While Ryan uses his journal to speculate about the mystery, Sarah resumes her exploration, camcorder in hand. Through furtive e-mails, she shares her findings with Ryan and directs him to video links on her Web page. Ryan records the passwords in his journal, allowing readers to go online and see what Sarah has found.Some of the nine clips show Sarah musing into the camera from the safety of her bedroom. But her illicit, nighttime footage of the dredge has a heightened tension that recalls “The Blair Witch Project” as the camera captures abandoned woods, a ghostly face and mysterious taps and groans. The footage ends with a heart-stopping cliffhanger.The video was directed by Carman’s friend, Jeffrey Townsend, a Walla Walla filmmaker who spent 20 years in feature films — mostly as a production designer or second unit director on films like “Sleepless in Seattle” and “Maid to Order.”Townsend, 54, said he jumped at Carman’s invitation because his mission as a filmmaker is to bring “feature-level quality” to smaller-scale projects.”My initial panic,” Townsend said, “was that he just wanted my advice and not my involvement.”Carman, who fronted production costs from his six-figure advance, said, “We actually went down to Los Angeles and screen-tested about 100 girls. The casting agent was the same casting agent as for ‘Pulp Fiction.’ “In the end, they cast a hometown girl, Amber Larsen, to play Sarah and used a part-time, relatively inexperienced cast and crew.Book two was a relative breeze to film — and, according to Townsend, resulted in “a deeper and richer experience” for the viewer — because he and Carman faced a steep learning curve with book one. At times, they weren’t sure they could pull it off.In particular, Townsend said, “I was nervous I would not gauge how scary it should be for this age group.”He shot the spookiest scenes first so Scholastic could vet them. Booksellers who’ve seen the film say age 11 or 12 is a good threshold.”Ten may be too young for the scary parts,” said Rene Kirkpatrick, buyer at Third Place Books. Still, she said, the scary element is exactly what will grab reluctant readers, especially boys.Terry Foster of Barnes & Noble, a former teacher who has worked with interactive learning, said she thinks the hybrid format transcends gimmickry and will make young readers feel they’re participating in the story.”I think they’ve been longing for something like this,” Foster said.The inspiration for “Skeleton Creek” was a landmark dredge Carman encountered several years ago on a family vacation in tiny Sumpter, Ore. Now part of the Oregon State Heritage Area, the dredge — the last of three built on the Powder River — operated from 1935 to 1954. Carman’s story plays off a legend that the dredge is haunted by a worker named Joe Bush, who perished when his pants leg was caught in the gears.Scholastic’s executive editorial director, David Levithan, foresees “a huge future” for multiplatform books like “Skeleton Creek.””I don’t think it’s going to replace print,” he said, “but I think print will broaden to include it.”Within a few years, he said, readers will be able to toggle easily between print and video links directly from electronic readers like Amazon’s Kindle device. The result, he maintains, will be a richer experience that expands kids’ learning.”I really think,” he said, “it will make us rethink our definition of what literacy is.”