I really love this author and I haven't heard of any who write young adult literature in the way he does - by providing the reader with an interactive text in print form! Patrick Carman is the author of series such as Skeleton Creek and Trackers which provide the reader with websites to visit with videos to watch or puzzles to solve. The third installment of the Skeleton Creek series, The Crossbones was released yesterday (Wednesday 9/1/10) and book four will be out in the spring!
Aside from the coolness of mixing digital composition with traditional text and using classic literature and film references as passwords to unlock the videos ("pitandpendulum", for instance), I heard from my mentor teacher that the kids are fighting in the library over who gets to check out The Crossbones next and getting their new friends in to the series. Turns out technology isn't totally corrupting our youth, it's making them actually want to read. (And adults, this series is a great guilty-pleasure read as well).
If I ever taught this book again, I would totally take a field trip to visit the "haunted" dredge which is in Sumpter, Oregon. I went this summer, and it was so interesting to walk though the site of this mystery and a piece of preserved history in a historic area of Oregon. Unfortunately, there was no sight of the ghost of Old Joe Bush...
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