- Dove fires back (says ads were not digitally altered, at least not "substantially") (AdAge.com, reg. required)

- Beyonce's creepy new kids' line (a little too adult for the Romper Room set. And Perez Hilton has a new fashion line, too) (Gawker)

- Grand Theft Childhood (reviewed by Ars Technica - in a nutshell: games don't make teens killers. Plus game sellers getting better at enforcing ratings, i.e. not selling M rated games to teens and tweens)

- Mobile social networking (is growing. Plus youth consume the most online video. And stats on the aging hip hop/urban youth market) (MarketingVOX) (MarketingCharts) (Media Post, reg. required)

- MySpace goes portable; let's users share (allowing you to import your data on lots of sites) (SFGate.com)

- You have to watch 'real' news (to get Jon Stewart....according to this think tank.) (AP)

- The greening of campus food (Plus Gradspot.com offers a free eBook on life after college.) (WireTap)

P.S. If any Ypulse readers attended the Joan Cooney Ganz Center Symposium today and would like to write a guest post summarizing -- let me know! They released two papers: The Power of Pow! Wham!: Children, Digital Media and Our Nation's Future and a policy brief from Dr. James Paul Gee. And more research on parents' perspectives on digital kids.

P.P.S. Here's another silly but fun Obama video for all you supporters out there. Have a great weekend!

Digg It

Post to Del.icio.us

Lisa's Generation Relations Blog (by Lisa Orrell, author of Millennials Incorporated
Millennial Leaders (goes with the book by the same name)
Twenty Set (Personal and Professional Development for Millennials created by Monica O'Brien)
Welcome to this joyride (by 23-year-old Lindsey)
My Gen Y Life (by Melanie Lopez)
Modite (Modern Urbanite by Rebecca Thorman)
Life Before Noon (written by five college seniors)

I'm sure there are more great blogs on this topic out there -- so feel free to add your own in the comments!

Digg It

Post to Del.icio.us

BookVideos.tv (Creators TurnHere describe it as a "new multi-publisher book-centric network." At first I thought it was a giant book-movie trailer site... but it's much more.) (GalleyCat)

Minders of Make Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of American Children's Literature (by Leonard S. Marcus. Sounds serious and not for those that take children's literature lightly.) (Bookslut)

This author created his own cover (Cool follow-up to our recent post about YA covers. Check out James Owen's The Search for the Red Dragon) (Omnivoracious)

Skepticism (about the Renaissance Learning's "What Books Are Students Reading in Grades 1-12") (Educating Alice)

The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Director Chris Wedge ["Ice Age" and "Robots"] will lead the way.) (Yahoo! News)

'Sarah Dessen, YA before YA was cool' (I dunno, she looks pretty young to me. YA's been cool for a long time.) (IndyWeek)

Wilmington College Children's Literature Conference ("Exploring and Supporting Children's Responses to Literature" attracted over 100 high school and elementary school students. Most of the conference was for college aged education students, but how cool is it they invited the local kids for the first day?) (Wilmington News)

U.S. Department of Education, First Book and Random House ("Launch 2008 Summer Reading Initiative that will provide 850,000 free books to schools, libraries and community organizations")

Ranger's Apprentice's author (John Flanagan tells the story of how his book came to be, and how it felt to find out it was going to Hollywood.) (Sydney Morning Herald)

Digg It

Post to Del.icio.us

Fusion Stories: Asian Pacific Heritage Month

This year Asian Americans are playing major roles in teen pop culture like never before. Take Ramiele Malubay (American Idol), for example, or Bobby Lee (MADtv), Kal Penn and John Ho (Harold and Kumar), Kristi Yamaguchi and Carrie Ann Inaba (Dancing with the Stars), Kaba Modern and Jabbawockeez (Randy Jackson's America's Best Dance Crews), and even MTV's Tila Tequila.

New Asian American voices have also moved into the mainstream of the book world. Today's titles for teens aren't mainly immigrant stories nor traditional tales retold. They deal with universal themes such as a straight-A teen struggling with a cheating scandal at her school (She's So Money by Cherry Cheva), a promising athlete coping with a snowboarding injury (Girl Overboard by Justina Chen Headley), and a Pakistani-born blogger whose father is about to become President (my own First Daughter: White House Rules).

An Na's The Fold, a novel about a teen considering plastic surgery to change the shape of her eyelids, speaks to all who long to be beautiful, and art-loving teens far and wide will connect with Joyce Lee Wong¹s novel-in-verse Seeing Emily. Paula Yoo, a one-time writer for People magazine and television hits like The West Wing, fuses her pop culture savvy and love of music in Good Enough, a novel about a violinist in rebellion. Her brother, David Yoo, connected with hormone-crazed nerds of every race in his funny novel Girls For Breakfast and is offering his fans the forthcoming Stop Me if You've Heard This One Before.

Founder of Readergirlz, a literacy initiative for teens, award-winning author Justina Chen Headley notes that these books are relished by readers from many different backgrounds. "There are a ton of interesting cultural trends that make it cool to read about Asian American characters," she says. "Take manga and anime, for instance. Or Gwen Stefani's harujuku girls. Mainstream, popular celebrities from actors to athletes are Asian American, and this is filtering into YA and middle grade novels."

Author Lisa Yee remembers the frustration of not finding many books about American girls like her. "When I grew up, there was no fiction featuring contemporary Asian Americans, unless of course the book was about the struggle of immigrants," she says. Thanks to exciting changes in children's book publishing, it's a different world for today's young readers of every cultural heritage, and they have many choices when it comes to novels.

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, and ten of us have banded together to offer FUSION STORIES, a menu of delectable next-gen hot-off-the-press novels for middle readers and young adults. FUSION STORIES' authors include Cherry Cheva (Los Angeles, CA), Justina Chen Headley (Seattle, WA), Grace Lin (Boston, MA), An Na (Montpelier, VT), Mitali Perkins (Boston, MA), Janet Wong (Princeton, NJ), Joyce Lee Wong (Los Angeles, CA), Lisa Yee (South Pasadena, CA), David Yoo (Boston, MA), and Paula Yoo (Los Angeles, CA).

FUSION STORIES aims to be a helpful resource for parents, educators, and young readers, so if you know of a novel that (1) is for middle readers or teens, (2) was published in 2007-2008 by a traditional publishing house, (3) features an Asian American protagonist, and (4) is set primarily in contemporary America, please send a .jpg of the cover, a .jpg of the author, one or two reviews, and a brief description of the novel here. FUSION STORIES would be delighted to add titles and authors to the site.

For more information, review copies, or interview requests with any of the authors, please contact press@fusionstories.com.

Digg It

Post to Del.icio.us

I loved what Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian) said about how YA books differ from their adult counterparts. I've heard this question asked of authors a lot. This is the most eloquent explanation I've ever heard:

"Writing for teens involves a stripped-down technique, Alexie said. "You tend to write more like Hemingway than Faulkner. More like Emily Dickinson than T.S. Eliot. It's not a matter of more complex thoughts, but the number of adverbs and adjectives. In the adult world, the number of adverbs and adjectives can be confused with great writing."

On the stigma of writing for the YA audience, he said:

"I thought I'd been condescended to because I'm an Indian," he said. "That was nothing compared to the condescension I get because I've written a YA novel." He said that fellow writers have also accused him of chasing a lucrative market. "Because I've written a book about a 16-year-old," he said, "that means I'm a capitalistic whore."

A key issue that I've pondered about aloud here at Ypulse Books, is the question: Are YA books for or about young people? An audience member asked the panel about this and again, Alexie's response was dead-on:

"If the former, a more conservative point of view comes in. If they are about young people, it's more about respecting and not protecting. As an Indian I'm used to being what I call 'reservationized.' There can be a sense of the category, instead of elevating us, doing the reverse."

I would add, this kind of sensitivity to young readers is crucial. If we continue to consciously and carefully consider what is the most respectful approach to youth, getting books that achieve both the "for and about" factor, is possible. As YA advances in literary stature as well as a viable source of sales for publishers, we increasingly look at defining it. I think that's a good thing, but one question I would ask or rather like to see addressed is how we can include teens in this discussion? How can they inform us on these definitive issues? What makes a YA a YA to them?

Digg It

Post to Del.icio.us

- Require companies offering services -- called "widgets" or applications -- to implement and enforce Facebook's safety and privacy guidelines; [this may be cost prohibitive for some startups, especially if screening user generated content becomes mandatory]

- Review and scrutinize requests by a user to change his or her age. Requests to change profile ages will be logged, and Facebook will grant only a single request to change an age above or below 18. [ok, I guess this is supposed to prevent predators from lying about their age though research has shown only 5 percent actually do]

- Maintain and continuously update a list of pornographic websites and regularly sever any links to such sites; [fine, they're just a click away on "the internets"]

- Increase efforts to remove groups for incest, pedophilia, cyberbullying and other violations of the site's terms of services and expel from the site individual violators of those terms, [this is positive]

- Aggressively remove inappropriate images and content; [notice doesn't define what's inappropriate or require mandatory screening...yet]

- More prominently display safety tips; [people don't read these, but fine]

- Require users under 18 to affirm they have read Facebook's safety tips when they sign up; [useless]

- Regularly review models for abuse reporting and perform a test using the New Jersey Attorney General's abuse reporting icon. [I don't know why they have to use that icon -- I guess they want consistency across sites -- it's definitely noticeable and I think, any way to make reporting abuse more obvious is positive]

- Restricting searches by over-18 users so they cannot seek under -- 18 users, along with other significant limits on searches; [so you can't really find your students or teens unless you ask them to friend you first]

- Limiting certain ads for age-restricted products -- such as alcohol and tobacco -- to users old enough to purchase such items; [makes sense]

- Identifying and removing profiles of all registered sex offenders;

- Sending automatic warning messages when a child is in danger of providing personal information to an unknown adult; [ok - so does this work when teens have joined a group and left their profile open to the entire group or network?]

- Providing extensive privacy controls allowing the user to block access to their profile, restrict information available to users not their friends and prevent another user from contacting them; [we know many young people don't change their default settings -- more complexity means less active management unless we work on education]

- Providing parents with tools to remove their underage child's profile from the site. [I don't know if underage means under 13 or under 18 -- if it's under 18, teens will most likely just create an alias profile or go elsewhere]

Also eCRUSH's Amy Gibby commented on this yesterday:

The Facebook safety/privacy deal has been a long time coming. The comments on Tech Crunch raised some important issues, especially how do the big guns (facebook, myspace, google, etc) share these best practices to hundreds maybe thousands of other sites that reach teens in some social capacity. As changes start to roll out, none of this should be proprietary as it is all being done to protect the safety of teens. Like the predators database, it should be available to all and not with a price tag. Maybe this greater scope is part of their agenda... i don't know. If there is a priority to support niche sites, can that please be made public? and can there be a way for sites to contribute to the dialog to make sure their users' interests are also protected?

Seems like a great jumping off point for discussion...

Digg It

Post to Del.icio.us

- Grand Theft Auto biggest selling game... (ever. I get to hear it being played for the next few weeks in my living room) (Reuters)

- More 'advertainment' on MTV (the network will be creating more branded entertainment. Plus the nerds of "Superbad" rule the MTV Movie Award noms) (New York Times, reg. required) (Reuters)

- Turner's comedy site Super Deluxe (to be absorbed into Adult Swim...anyone heard much about Funny or Die lately?) (NewTeeVee)

- Tweens abandoning Miley? (maybe, but the ratings decline seems to have started before the Vanity Fair photos) (Gawker)

- Dove's 'real beauty' (not so real. Evidently the "real" looking women were airbrushed - big credibility blow) (AdAge.com, reg. required)

- School administrators concerned (about teens hopped up on energy drinks - thanks Andrea!) (The Moderate Voice)

- Fashionspace (social networking for fashionistas last year is evidently doing pretty well. And check out Coolspotters where you can find out how to dress like your favorite celeb. Plus Stardoll launches an app for girls to design their own virtual clothes) (Reuters) (Media Post, reg. required)

- If you love M.I.A.'s colorful videos (you'll probably love her new fashion line) (PSFK)

- Salvia madness (evidently kids' posting videos of themselves high on Salvia is helping to get the drug banned. Plus Facebook about to launch major new safety measures. And a new UK safety campaign for little kiddies online called Hector's World) (Gawker) (Tech Crunch) (BBC)

- Teen pregnancy prevention (goes viral - with a new campaign from our friends at Nextgreatthing.com)

- Totally wired youth activism (danah has the scoop and an essay in a new book focused on youth leveraging social media to organize)

Digg It

Post to Del.icio.us

What bums me out about this is that these clubs often serve low income youth who may not have a laptop or PC at home. So it's essentially one less place they can go to experience the social media their middle class peers are using all the time. It's also a missed opportunity to offer these teens real guidance on using these sites. I was also told the Boys & Girls Clubs have an amazing internet safety program -- and I'm sure it is very comprehensive....in its coverage of safety. My guess is that it doesn't really cover ethics or information literacy. The other concern they have is that if something happens from one of their computers, they'll have angry parents to answer to.

I understand the need to limit access to these sites at school when teens are supposed to be focused on learning. Though I would argue that this, too, can happen without actually blocking. But Boys & Girls Clubs are spaces to hang out in, just as MySpace and Facebook are virtual spaces to hang out and connect in.

Hopefully, I was able to persuade at least some of the people listening (ok, not the guy who told me I talked too much, that he dozed off a few times and wished I would have taught them all how to create MySpace profiles), but some of the people there to think about unblocking these sites.

I don't think it's enough for me to just say, "unblock." So here is what I would propose after school programs like the Boys & Girls Clubs should do. Invite parents to a talk similar to what I do -- emphasizing the positives along with the challenges, and the reality that these kids need to have access to these sites to be competitive in the future. The idea is to get them more comfortable and less afraid. Develop a mandatory workshop for any Boys & Girls Club teens who want to log on from the Club -- BUT have it taught by teens aka their peers. The workshop should be fun, engaging and cover privacy, ethics and some information literacy. Youth workers can identify the teens who are really into the computers and train them to be peer educators. Then create a contract/agreement between the teens and the Club around using the internet. If they mess up, they lose access for a period of time. If this is all done in a way that treats these teens as if they won't mess up, they probably won't.

We have to educate, not legislate (the latest attempt) and block -- and not deny access to teens who will otherwise be left behind.

Digg It

Post to Del.icio.us

- Profile in Entrepreneurship: Anshul Samar, Alchemist Empire, Inc.
- High School Panel
- Marketing to Teens: A View from the Tech Community
- What will Happen? Teens in the Workforce
- Profile in Entrepreneurship: Salina Truong, Gumball Capital
- Investing in Teens and Teen Products: What Does it Take to Succeed?
- What's Happening with Teen Entrepreneurs?
- Inspiring Teens in Technology and Entrepreneurship: What Non-Profits are Doing

Ypulse publisher Charles Pelton will be at the SDForum event -- silver hair, black Converse high tops. If you see him, say hello.

The other event is the live webcast tomorrow of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center Inaugural Symposium, Logging Into the Playground: How Digital Media Are Shaping Children's Learning. I was invited to attend, but am speaking at another event in San Jose on May 13th (which is why I won't be at the SDForum event) and then catching a Red Eye to Toronto (I'm tired just thinking about this). Didn't want to zig zag across the country. This event is packed with heavy hitters from industry, academia and the non-profit/foundation space. It is literally the embodiment of what I wrote about needing to happen in my BusinessWeek Online column a few months back. Check out their full agenda here (.pdf). Of course it starts streaming at 6 a.m. for us west coast folks (ouch). I hope they will put video up on YouTube later as well.

Digg It

Post to Del.icio.us

The Golden Rules for Engaging Youth Online: Keeping your brand fresh and building connections to create a base of youth advocates

Today the biggest challenge in marketing to youth is the rapid pace with which trends emerge, creating a need for brands to stay fresh and relevant. This challenge is compounded by a youth market that is increasingly product-savvy and informed on the many choices available to them; which means that brands must establish authentic connections to best engage these young, intelligent consumers.

Having spent more than 10 years working closely with the youth market, I have gained crucial insight into what strategies are most successful in mobilizing young people and generating buzz for brands. The most important principle to follow when marketing to young people is to never pretend to be something you're not online, as youth are the first to see past quick sales attempts.

Here are four golden rules for keeping your brands fresh and building long-lasting connections with youth:

Get personal
Involve your customers in your campaigns and create a community of advocates - who better to learn from than your peers? It's a noisy, often impersonal world: On average consumers are hit with two marketing messages a minute. Nothing helps break through all of that like engaging your audience in a relevant way.

Experiment with unconventional platforms
An element of entertainment is key to engaging with youth, as they are constantly bombarded with information, communication and entertainment. You need to create an interactive environment with breakthrough creative that actually engages. Take Amazon's Mechanical Turk tool: It creates a dialogue and surrounding community by allowing people to post problems for others to solve in a compelling way. Imagine building audience loyalty with a similar tool that enables fans to provide feedback directly on a movie script or video game plot.

Integrate your online with off-line campaigns and go mobile
Create ongoing connections wherever and whenever young people are engaging. According to a recent OTX Research study, anywhere from a third to half of teens say mediums such as TV, magazines and advertising in general are still among their most important influences. Additionally, young people are exposed to images daily just by utilizing public transportation and traveling around their city or town. This understanding of the ebb and flow of humans on a given day was behind the Halo 3 viral campaign that included a group called "The Society for the Ancients" handing out seemingly innocuous flyers on city streets. But Halo-savvy passersby picked up on some visual clues and ended up a website that took the story deeper.

People don't exist in a vacuum or rely on a single medium. The power of an impression builds with the number of different ways your message is disseminated. Repetition, in a variety of media, can be your best friend.

Kids are increasingly communicating on mobile devices, whether it be through IM or Twitter. Smart campaigns leverage the communities and immediacy that those mediums offer.

Leverage new social networking tools
As the Web becomes modularized through the use of widgets and gadgets, there's an opportunity to use those technologies to spread a community virally in the social-networking world. A band's latest songs, for example, can be packaged in a widget and spread to many different audiences. A clip from a new movie, made portable through YouTube embed codes, moves quickly among the youth market and can become fodder for additional mash-up content.

Building a social-networking environment can be a very important technique, not only to build community but enable a new type of connection that leads to increased word of mouth (WOM), better products and services, and a more engaged customer base.

Digg It

Post to Del.icio.us

- Yet another stimulating season of 'The Hills' (the MTV favorite has been renewed for a fourth installment) (Reality Blurred)

- Political statements through music videos (ah, the power of free campaigning via technology) (St. Louis Dispatch)

- Earning less than our parents' generations (with the same education, same qualifications, same job positions) (via Yahoo! News)

- Location-based social networking (Google Maps meets Facebook with Socialight opening up its tools to mobile developers - Michael Sharon, Socialight's CEO, will be a speaker at the Ypulse Mashup in July!) (Mashable)

- Aniboom goes mobile (the ugc animation site also happens to be a Mashup speaker) (Media Post, reg. required)

- Defending Gen-Y to the tune of The Who's 'My Generation' (a great essay about the negative connotations of the teen generation) (L.A. Times)

- Fee-free newspapers in the future (with so many people reading news online, free papers seem inevitable) (Reuters)

- Rapping about 'The Economist' (the song, along with a new "Economist" Facebook group, is bringing an unexpected young surge of readers to the periodical) (Guardian)

- 'Truth' ads are a tad out of touch (claims AdRants citing ancient quotes from now-deceased tobacco bigwigs has little sway with teens)

Digg It

Post to Del.icio.us

BTW, relating back to the same section that was speaking about youth ministers reaching out into youth culture one of the trends that's recently become a discussion point for youth that are both liberal and religious is deciding whether to call themselves Christian or not, they like the socially active and positive sides of Christianity (actively trying to make their neighborhoods and cities better, helping the homeless and troubled, etc) but don't want the stigma of fundamentalism that the word implies.

Digg It

Post to Del.icio.us

Deleting an existing account and creating an alter ego is, in most cases, unnecessary. Say you just graduated from college and snagged your first "grown up" job. After your first day of work, you receive a friend request from your boss on Facebook. What are your options?

1) Decline friend request. After all, this is your boss, not your buddy.
2) Accept friendship, but only allow limited profile viewing.
3) Delete your hard-partying pictures. You're a professional now, welcome to the real world.

Recent grads might miss those photos, but there are certainly benefits to keeping a profile with your actual name. Online networking can be endlessly beneficial, especially for young professionals who are moving to new cities and starting new jobs. And for those still on the job hunt, social networking sites can also help uncover the perfect job - though preferably not under that fake name. The New York Times (reg. required) recently reported a rise in utilizing Facebook for the sole purpose of business networking. New applications from CareerBuilder.com and Jobster.com even help people kick off the job search from the comfort of their own personal profiles.

While Facebook can be a daily reminder of what college life was like, it also has the potential to be a shiny free resume for everyone to see. In the end, it comes down to deciding whether snapshots of beer bongs and keg stands or business contacts and career options mean more to young people leaving college. No one said it was going to be an easy decision.

Digg It

Post to Del.icio.us

- Do Hard Things (Twin brothers Alex and Brett Harris write about what they call the Rebelution...the notion that teens should reject the low-expectations of youth culture.)

- 'Patterson Aplenty' (Interesting background story to the YA and adult marketing approach with the Maximum Drive series...I guess a fan is a fan.) (Publisher's Weekly)

- What kids are reading when (The Renaissance Learning Report gives us an idea of what kids are reading and in what grade. Look for some surprises.) (Washington Post, reg. required)

- The Host (By Stephenie Meyer, author of Twilight is the talk of the town. We're often talking about children's author's trying their hands at writing for adults here at Ypulse Books, so this is an interesting change. I'm curious to see how she fares.) (Omnivoracious)

- More about Stephenie Meyer (This is a great article, and I'm sorry but what stood out to me as though it were in bold faced type was that she wrote Twilight WHILE HOME WITH THREE CHILDREN UNDER 5 !!!!!!!!!!! She is supernatural!) (TIME.com)

- Good food for thought (For librarians, sometimes parents' and kid patrons' needs don't match. What do you do?) (Read Roger)

- Some constructive criticism for Neil Gaiman's camp (What's up with all of the adaptations and what about the middle readers?) (Educating Alice)

- YA sci-fi finally surpassing adult sci-fi in sales (And why it matters at Whatever.) (Fuse #8)

- Free Britannica subscriptions for bloggers (School Library Journal)

- YA for gumshoe lovers ("Kid, Private Investigator" at Bookslut)

- Book social networking (this is an older link to an NPR story but a good roundup of social networks focused on sharing book recommendations)

Digg It

Post to Del.icio.us

Does the quality of the book have anything to do with these expectations? The Golden Compass was the first among the photos and I don't know if that means it 's #1 on the list, but that seems a little harsh. Yeah, I agree it was a little bit of a let-down, but I was prepared. On the contrary, I didn't expect anything nearly as wonderful as the book. I knew it couldn't be done. I think that allowed me to enjoy the movie for what it was: one version of the story -- a different illustration, if you will. I also wonder if it had been so long since I'd read the books, that I wasn't as committed to my own mental impressions?

In the case of Twilight, I don't even want to see the trailer. (I linked to it, but I didn't watch.) It's too soon. I'm just finishing New Moon and I am savoring every minute. I want Bella and Edward exactly as I've created them in my mind before giving into someone else's vision. (My Edward is a handsome cross between Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst and the guy who played Mark in Showtime's 'Meadowlands'. My Bella is more Ellen Page (Juno) than Kristen Stewart.) I'll come around, I know, but for now I'm not ready.

I don't understand how a bad movie would inspire anyone to read the book, but here's a great list of books that are on their way to the big screen to read first. (Powell's)

Digg It

Post to Del.icio.us