“Fanart” of the
most characteristic symbols of Memorias
de Idhún: the three mythic creatures: the unicorn, the dragon and the shek
as well as the hexagon that represents the three suns and three moons of this
fictional world. Fuente: http://lincelots.deviantart.com/art/Idhun-268499134
In the
first part of this article I presented some arguments in favor of using YA
fantasy literature in the school as well as some possibilities to introduce it
in classroom practice. Yet, the educational potential of fantasy books does not
only lie in the text itself but it goes far beyond the pages of the book as we shall
see below.
When
teenagers like a story and they feel identified with it, they do not want the
experience to end when they finish the book, instead, what they want to do is
to share their impressions, chat about what they liked or did not like, or form
groups in which they can make the story their own. In other words, they try to
include a social component into the solitary act of reading. With this
intention, fan communities appear: groups of people who share hobbies or a
liking for a certain cultural object and who find in the Internet an ideal
space to develop this interest. A simple search across the web shows that YA
fantasy series are especially prolific at creating this type of fans
communities, with Harry Potter, Twilight or Memorias de Idhún being prime examples.
A
peculiarity of these groups is that they encourage and promote the creation of
contents and creative material related to the source text, and this is the
reason they are often called “participatory cultures” (Jenkins, 2009). Some
examples of the materials they create are the so-called “fanfics” (short for
“fan fiction”), fan-written literary texts which enhance or complement the
story on which they are based; “fan arts”, any type of artistic or visual
material, including drawings, videos or craftwork, or “cosplays”, costumes
which represent an specific fictional character and which are normally created
and sewn from scratch by the fans themselves.
What is
especially interesting about this fact is that we have evidence (Borah, 2002,
pp. 347-348; Evans, 2006, cited in Reynolds, 2007) that a great part of the
members of these participatory cultures are teenagers or young people. It means
that the same students - often those who are unmotivated in our classrooms- are
able not only to form online groups which they themselves manage but also to
cooperate in the development of literary texts, videos and other artistic
materials.
Moreover,
one needs to take into account that, once they are finished, most of these
creations are later shared online so that they can be commented on or evaluated
by the other members of the community. Lluch and Acosta (2012) describe these
interactions among members as a form of “positive feedback in the act of
sharing which strengthens the good behavior among the forum users and which
encourages them to keep reading, analyzing, learning and reflecting” (p. 49 ABM transl). Thanks to this receptive
and cooperative atmosphere, the teenagers exert themselves in their work in
order to receive positive comments and feedback from their peers and they often
show an involvement and a passion in these tasks that we often miss in their
classwork.
For
instance, in the following image (retrieved from a personal account of DeviantArt,
the popular virtual community of art makers), one can see that the author
created a high quality picture based on a scene of Memorias de Idhún in which he/she combined techniques from
traditional drawing with digital illustration and image processing. By
accessing the portal where the illustration is hosted (please see the
description under the image) one can also observe the messages of support and
criticism I referred to in the last paragraph.
“Fanart” showing one of the scenes of the first
book of Memorias de Idhún in which
Victoria heals her friend Jack’s wounds with her magic. Source: http://sparkly-monster.deviantart.com/art/MDI-Jack-y-Victoria-493098540
The same quality
work can be appreciated in many “fanfics” too, in which their authors (it is
important to remember that many of them are teenagers) are very careful to note
both the language used and the level of fidelity to the story they are based
on, something which requires a very close reading of the original text. If
anyone is interested in “fanfics”, I recommend the virtual community “wattpad”
or the official forum of Lauga Gallego in the case of Memorias de Idhún, which fulfill the task of repositories of these
amateur literary works. As to videos, the platform Youtube is without a doubt
the best tool to use in the search of fan-made book-trailers.
Summarizing, teenagers
are able to create quality art work, sometimes alone and sometimes in
cooperation and, furthermore, they are able to appreciate the work carried out
by others by making value judgements. It is worth highlighting that they do all
of it selflessly in their free time, fuelled only by their motivation towards
stories and characters which connect to what concerns them and what they are
interested in.
Fan-made Booktrailer of the first book of
Memorias de Idhún. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pM0m7b4dIM
The point I’m trying
to make is that, although it is true that YA fantasy literature is a rich and
motivating material in itself, all those participatory processes which derive
from it and that I have detailed above are no less interesting from an
educational point of view.
Teachers and educators
tend to think that it is complicated to find innovative and interesting
activities which motivate students. However, I think we should simply identify
what they like doing and make them aware that their hobbies are also
opportunities to learn. In our case, by paying attention to the activities
youngsters carry out in the on-line communities, we can find many different
ideas that may be integrated perfectly into classroom practice. Participating
in forums or creating transmedia contents about the stories they like should
not be in a conflict with literature learning. On the contrary, I consider
these new practices to be a new way of understanding and creating knowledge
and, therefore, they would be a useful tool to lend that twist to education I
referred to at the beginning of this article.
For example, the required
reading of a book might turn out to be something worth doing if it is a book
which students like or about which they have heard from people their age, even
if it is as thick as Memorias de Idhún;
the boring process of writing a composition might become a self-improvement
challenge (as it is already promoted from the platform NaNoWriMo (*) or the
traditional summary of a text may be more fun to do when used as the script of
a booktrailer recorded in class and subsequently uploaded to an on-line
platform.
In
conclusion, and in contrast to what it has traditionally thought, YA fantasy
literature is a didactic material as valid as any other. Its rich stories and
the flexibility of the genre make it a useful tool not only for teaching
literature but also for any other subject area. Moreover, because of the high
level of motivation that these books rouse in young readers, they become involved
in collaborative processes of artistic creation which in themselves have great
educational potential and, if allowed, these processes can work as innovative
class elements that connect with 21st century youngsters’ tastes and
interests.
Alberto Bolaños Montealegre
Notes
(*) The
online platform NaNoWriMo is described on its webpage as “a fun,
seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing” in which “On November 1,
participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by
11:59 PM on November 30.” Despite the possible difficulty of the challenge, the
fact is that this initiative has had a warm reception on the Internet. In fact,
there are already some interesting novels published as a consequence of this
project, like “Fangirl” by Rainbow Rowell or “Cinder” by Marissa Meyer in the
field of juvenile literature.
References
- Jenkins,
H. (2009) Confronting the Challenges of
Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st century.
Cambridge, Massachusetts; London: The MIT Press. Available from: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/confronting-challenges-participatory-culture (Last accessed 9th
January 2016)
- Borah, R.
S. (2002) “Apprentice Wizards Welcome: Fan communities and the Culture of Harry
Potter”. In: Whited, L. A. (ed.) The
Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon. Columbia; London: University of Missouri Press.
-
Lluch, G. y Acosta, M. (2012) “Conversaciones
sobre lecturas en la web 2.0: El caso de Laura Gallego (Análisis de
conversaciones virtuales entre adolescentes)”. En: Lecturas para el nuevo siglo: formación receptora y lector hipertextual.
La Laguna: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de La Laguna.
- Reynolds, K. (2007) Radical Children’s Literature: Future
Visions and Aesthetic Transformations in Juvenile Fiction. Basingstoke; New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
