In my attempts to encourage teachers to embrace new forms of narrative in their choice of texts for

use in the classroom, the example I keep returning to is Inanimate Alice, a multimedia phenomenon

which is surely ahead of its time, and teachers never fail to be excited by the possibilities it opens up

for transforming learning and literacy in their classrooms.

I fiI first met Alice about a year ago, and it was more or less love at first sight -something about her vul-

nerability, the edgy soundtrack and the modest but stunning good looks – of her virtual environment.

Alice herself you cleverly don’t get to see for the moment. In the words of her creator Ian Harper, an

exiled Scot now living in Minneapolis, Alice was ‘born digital’, and Harper describes himself as a

‘digital first, trans-media storyteller.’ In other words, this is not an adaptation of something which

appeared originally in print, nor is it an e-book in the now commonly accepted understanding of the

termterm, but a genuinely new concept in reading which combines elements of the written word, digital

still photography, moving image, drawing, painting, puzzles, music, sound effects and elements of

computer gaming. Unlike a computer game, however, it does have the linear progression of a book,

and the reader ‘turns the page’ when he or she is ready to move on.

Over ten increasingly complex and interactive episodes planned

for the story – four of them are already online - we accompany

Alice from the age of eight in China, where her father works in the

oil industry and has just mysteriously disappeared, to her maturity

at twenty-something as the ultimate games designer on a mission

to save the world. How she comes to be the ‘inanimate’ Alice of the

title is still to be revealed, although there is the beginning of a clue

in Episode Four when her friends first call her ‘the animator’.

WWorking with the prize-winning Canadian novelist Kate Pullinger and digital artist Chris Joseph,

Harper and his team created these fictional adventures of a young woman growing up in the early

years of the twentieth century, as the back-story for the main character in his 2003-2004 screenplay

E/Mission, a Matrix-like sci-fi thriller set in the not-too-distant future, where votes are cast and deci-

sions made through playing online computer games, governments are powerless to control either the

corporations or the populace, and the world is under threat. Only Alice and her virtual creation, the

supercool Brad, can save the planet from destruction.

Julie Call, a middle school reading specialist from Minneapolis USA, recently published a case study based on using ‘Inanimate Alice’ with teenagers. Julie stated that it was so wonderful to see some of her struggling readers and most challenging students completely challenging students completely engaged with text.

“Inanimate Alice is something special because it’s really

original to make a story you can read, play, and watch.”

“I felt like I was the main character and this was my

story.”

“I love how the music and the sounds help tell the story.”

“What I liked about this story were the imagery and the sound effects. When Alice was trudging down the moun-tain and snow was crunching under her feet, I felt a chill, and I could imagine how she was feeling.”

“I loved Inanimate Alice because you never know what is going to happen. I don’t know if it is the way it is written or the music or the sounds effects but it makes you a part of the story.”

“I loved the story because it helped me connect with Alice. I felt like I was there sitting next to her playing her ba-xi.”

Q: Why did you agree to write the novel?

A: I'd been working in the realm of digital fiction - using text, image, sound, sound effects, animation - to create stories for a few years and relished the opportunity to work on a series of linked episodes.

Q: Describe the cQ: Describe the creative process you went through in writing Inanimate Alice. A: ChA: Chris Joseph and I work together very closely. I write an initial draft of the script, which includes the text that will appear on the screen as well as thoughts and ideas about images, colours, sounds, etc. Chris and I then work on this document together, passing it back and forth, adding more ideas and layers. Toward the end of that process we show the script to Ian Harper, who gives us his feedbacfeedback. Then Chris begins building the work, creating the music, finding and creating the visuals. As the games in the episodes have become more complex, we've worked with a game designer, and we've also used a pro-fessional photographer to create images for episodes 3 and 4. The whole process takes several months, and a lot of toing and froing, sourcing materials, and testing.

Q: How did Inanimate Alice evolve for you?

A: A: For me the pedagogical side of the project came into play after the first couple of episodes were created; when we created it we were not thinking it could be used in classrooms - but that's turned out to be one of the best things about 'Inanimate Alice'. Another on-going interest of mine is finding ways to integrate the games and puz-zles into the story itself; the fact that Alice aspires to be a game desigame designer means there's a narrative reason for this type of interactivity.

Q: Was the choice of location for each of the episodes quite random or did you have certain criteria in mind?

A: A: It wasn't random at all - all part of creating the stories and thinking in terms of the story series. I knew that Al-ice's father moved around the world, often to remote lo-cations, for the first three episodes; by episode 4 they are settled in a small city in England - this was determined by the trajectory of the story, with the family's time as nomads coming to an end. The abrupt interruption of Alice's father's career in oil exploration is a blow to him, but of course it results in a whole new set of experiences for Alice.

Q: How do you feel the story is enhanced by the multi-media experience? A: The story wouldn't exist without the multimedia - it is a born-digital product.

Q: How can the games element of Episode 3 be used to enhance the narrative rather than detract from it? A: A: In many ways this depends upon the reader. We find that our readers are pretty evenly divided between those who like the games, and those who do not, which is why we have provided two versions of the episodes. For me it is important that the games are integrated into the story, and I think it is a richer viewing experience to play the games as well as read the story. But not everyone agrees. AlsAlso, as stated above, there's a strong narrative reason for the games - Alice's own interest in games design. The games are meant to represent her level of skill, becoming more complex as she gets older.

Q: What do you think are the main themes of the novel?

A: What it's like to be a child in today's tech-heavy world; how one girl uses her imagination to help her get by.

Q: Do you think this kind of multimedia read is the wave of the future? A: I don't know - time will tell. But I would not say it is 'the wave of the future' - I'd suggest it could be 'one of the waves of the future'.

Q: HQ: How do you respond to the challenge that digital literacy is OK but it is not like the real thing?

A: I'm not suggesting that people should stop reading books - far from it. But there are many ways to engage with stories, and there are many types of literacy. Our kids spend a lot of time looking at screens, and so why not creates stories that make full use of the technology?

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