Thing 19: Book Trailers

Welcome to Thing 19: Book Trailers

Book Trailers are akin to movie trailers. They use images, sound, and some text to "sell" the plot of a book to a perspective reader. I love movie previews and I always make sure I'm at the theater early enough to insure I see all 15 minutes of them before the feature presentation. I'm not sure why they are so appealing, but I truly believe they are an art form. The ability to boil down a two hour movie into an enticing 30 second visual sound bite is a real art unto itself, and the same can be said about book trailers.

Booktalking has been around since the printing press. The first film trailer was shown in 1913 for the musical The Pleasure Seekers. And the first public viewing of a book trailer was in 2003 at a book convention in Louisiana, it was for Dark Symphony by Christine Feehan.

In 2003 there weren't a lot of people creating and distributing book trailers, but today there are a ton. Take some time and visit of few of the following sites and to get a flavor for the variety of book trailers out there:

Kid Lit Kit Scholastic

HarperCollins Childrens

Movies for Literacy

As you can see, book trailers come in all shapes and sizes. There are professional quality ones, and not so professional quality ones. We're going to go over some of the steps to make a book trailer and then you can have a go at it yourself.

First decide how you are going to put your images together. If you have a Mac, you can use iMovie, but if you need free software, here are a couple of good choices:

- Windows Movie Maker

- PhotoStory

- PhotoShow

If you don't want to download any software, you can also use, Animoto or Imagechef to create an book trailer.

Now that you've chosen a platform, spend some time playing around so you get an idea of how you can add, delete, and manipulate images. Once you feel comfortable, it's time to find the images you want to use to create your book trailers. Here are some places you can find royalty free images online:

- Fotolia

- Teacher Tap

- Wikimedia Commons

Once you've decided on what images to use, go ahead and save them to your hard drive in your pictures folder. Book trailers can last anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes. Now import your images into your selected editing program. Use the video effects and transitions available to make your still images more interesting.

When you are satisfied with your images, you can go ahead and add music. Here are some sites with royalty free music.

- Partners in Rhyme

- Open Music Archive

- ccMixter

- Neo Sounds

OK now that you've added music, you have an official book trailer. YEAH! Now you can post it so everyone can see your hard work.

Book trailers are a great way to promote: new books in your collections, book discussions, and other book related programs in your department. Get your kids involved by holding workshops on how they can create their own book trailers and then post their finished pieces online.

Thing 18: Explore YouTube and Vimeo

YouTube and Vimeo - How many of you have moms or caregivers shooting videos on their iPhones during your storytimes?

Unless you've been living under a rock, you're probably familiar with YouTube videos. Who hasn’t clicked on a link to see Susan Boyle singing, or to see the latest “viral” video? Right now in "LibraryLand" it is Librarians do Gaga. With the advent of YouTube, everyone can be a star of the online community. YouTube is one of many sites that let you watch and upload videos for free. You can search for clips from your favorite tv show, favorite music videos from the 80s, famous political speeches and almost anything else you can imagine or dream up! To understand where youtube comes from, how it works and why it is so powerful, watch this video (on youtube!) of a talk that Professer Michael Wesch gave to the Library of Congress, An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube.

There are millions of YouTube contributors and it is generally a self-policing site, but if you’re concerned about security, you should know that children can run into questionable content on youtube. There are many other sites, that allow sharing of videos including Vimeo, Totlol, TeacherTube, and Hulu. Some of these offer safer content alternatives for viewing for young children. There are lots of resources about online safety, specifically about video-networking like this pdf from wiredsafety.org and surfnetkids.com. Google now owns YouTube and has posted some safety tips for parents in partnership with Common Sense Media.
Children can also create their own content - and have a BLAST doing it! Flip Video Cameras are cheap and easy to use and you and the kids in your library can create and share book trailers, promotional videos for your programs or really...anything! This is one of my favorite kid-made videos:

But don't be fooled into thinking that the videos have to be professional quality films. These video sharing sites can also allow you to share screencasts with your community like this on Darien Library's online presence:


The uses for these sites are endless! This can be a great tool for teachers and classrooms, as well as parents. You can teach parents to upload videos to share with family and friends. Family with relatives living far away or serving in the military would appreciate the chance to watch a videos of their young family growing up - their dance recitals, baseball games, or sharing books at the library's storytime!

Librarians can teach parents and kids how to create privacy screenings so that only your family and friends can log in and see the videos they've posted. Now smart phones make it even easier to record and upload video, all with the click of a button, all on the same device. Sites like Speekabos are great for the younger set; featuring digital storytelling, and there is a feature where you can also create and upload your own digital stories. Readeo is another great example of a site using video to connect people and children's books.

Explore YouTube and some of the other video sharing sites and find a video to embed in your blog. Can you think of some ways that you can use these sites to communicate with friends and relatives or for educational purposes? Can you see how it is considered a web 2.0 tool? If you need a little help embedding, check out this page for a tutorial.

Week 7

We're nearly done! Have you been able to keep up with our break-neck pace? We'll, it's almost over! This week we're looking at some very fun (and useful!) tools - YouTube, Vimeo and Book Trailers. While you probably know YouTube for various viral videos friends and relatives may have shared with you, it's an incredibly useful tool that libraries are doing very neat stuff with. And Book trailers? Think movie trailers for books and we're going to help you create them yourself! So fasten your seatbelts this week - it's wild out there!

Keep us informed about what you're thinking about all this crazy stuff and how you see (or don't see!) it fitting in with your library philosophy or services! And as always - we're here for questions and help!