When I was twelve, I spent most of my time after school watching Darkwing Duck, a show about which I now remember nothing except that the opening credits featured a duck wearing a wide-brimmed hat. Time, I fully concede, spent poorly. I have been thinking about how I spent my time as a youth lately because there have been two recent incarnations of youths producing really high quality literature and literary commentary: the Louder than a Bomb Chicago youth poetry slam and the Newberry Film Festival, in which youths aged 0-18 submit their 90-second homemade videos summarizing/reenacting the plots of Newberry Medal winners.
The Newberry Film Festival is curated by Chicago-based writer James Kennedy. On his website, Kennedy promotes the project this way, “Teachers, here’s a fun project that will get your students reading Newbery winners. Students, here’s an excuse to mess around with video equipment. Librarians, here’s an activity to do with your teen advisory boards. Anyone can enter. Everyone wins!” He’s right. Everyone does seem to win. These videos are not only hysterical, they give me hope for the future of reading. The children making these videos are clearly having fun. To reiterate, they are making reading fun, a task that many with noble intentions and stout hearts attempt and fail, fail miserably, fail in a way that actually makes reading less fun. To see youths succeed and succeed with smiles is incredibly buoying.
Louder than a Bomb, a documentary about the youth poetry slam, premiered on January 5th on the Oprah Winfrey Network and follows the preparations of four students living in Chicago. LTAB is an amazing event that inspires great art. Watch the documentary. Attend this year’s event. Support the talented individuals who make LTAB happen. It will impress you.
I am jealous of these two sets of youths. I am jealous that they are more literary as children and teenagers than I was. If there were, in fact, a wrinkle in time (Newberry Medal winner) and I were a youth in Chicago today, I’d like to think that I’d have been different. I’d like to think that I’d be donning a wig and videotaping myself bridging my way to Terabithia. I’d like to think that I’d have the courage to stand on a stage and read incredibly raw poetry. But since time travel is still relegated to fiction, I will have to acknowledge that I spent my youth watching a fashion conscious duck—I think—fight crime.
