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This theory is to help see the change in literature during the digital age. "The initial development of Radical Change theory made groundbreaking connections between printed books and digital culture..."

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The Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults

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Kyungwon Koh, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma

Koh, Kyungwon. " Radical Change Theory: Framework for Empowering Digital Youth." Journal of Research on Libraries & Young Adults 5 (2015): n. page. Web. <Date accessed>.

Abstract

Eliza T. Dresang influenced numerous researchers and professionals by equipping them to understand and better serve digital youth. This paper revisits her theory of Radical Change, which explains the synergistic combination of changing resources and youth in the digital age. The presented research applies and extends the theory by investigating the information behavior of digital youth. The study has two phases -Phase 1: content analysis of research literature; Phase 2: group and individual interviews with young adults who are members of an online community called Scratch. Selected findings illustrate the ways in which digital youth have an increased sense of control over learning, creative, and social aspects of their life. The study demonstrates that Radical Change theory provides a unique perspective to ferret out the potential of non-traditional information behaviors. The theory continues to be a tool for enhancing a sense of agency for digital youth by increasing their capacity to learn, create, and socialize. Future research applying the theory could explore how the dynamic interactions between changing resources and youth may have an impact on youth obtaining twenty-first-century skills.

Introduction

Eliza T. Dresang was best known for her theory of Radical Change, which explains changes in information resources and human information behavior in the current digital age. Her theory and research have influenced numerous researchers and professionals as they seek to understand digital youth. In this paper, the term "digital youth" refers to contemporary children and young adults (ages birth through eighteen years) who were born into this interactive and connected digital culture, regardless of their varying levels of access to technologies or digital media skills. In order to honor and remember Eliza T. Dresang, this paper attempts to answer the following questions:

Q1. What is the theory of Radical Change?

Q2. How does the theory help us understand the information behavior of digital youth? That is, what radical changes do contemporary youth experience when they interact with information?

Q3. What does the future of the theory look like?

To answer these questions, I begin with a review of Radical Change theory and research that has applied this theory. I will then present selected findings from my dissertation research, which was conducted with the guidance of Eliza T. Dresang. I had the privilege of working with her directly and take up her pioneering work of Radical Change by applying, testing, and extending the theory. The findings demonstrate the value of the theory in explaining the information behavior of digital youth. This paper concludes with a look toward the future of the theory.

The emphasis of this paper is on the theory's perspective on youth empowerment, as Dresang had always strived for empowering youth through her scholarly, professional, and personal achievements. The theory of Radical Change is fundamentally grounded in her belief in "the child-as-capable-and-seeking-connection." ¹ This paper proposes the future of the theory as a tool for enhancing a sense of agency of digital youth.

Radical Change Theory

Radical Change theory suggests that many of the changes in information resources and human behavior in this digital age can be explained through these core concepts: connectivity, interactivity, and access. While the theory is currently being used to investigate both resources and behavior, it was originally developed to explain changes in youth literature. The theory's explanatory power to study human behavior was revealed later by research studies that applied the theory across disciplines, such as library and information studies, education, and English.

Initial Development: Youth Literature with Digital Characteristics

Radical Change theory was initially developed in the mid-1990s to explain changes in youth literature in the digital age, in which society became increasingly more interactive and connected through digital networks. Serving as a lens through which to examine, explain, and use contemporary literature for youth growing up in the digital age, the theory was developed based on the following four assumptions, which support children's sense of agency:

Children are capable and are seeking connections.

The digital environment nurtures children's capabilities.

Handheld books offer digital-age connections.

Adults and youth are partners in the digital world.²

Dresang explained that these assumptions are an optimistic view of youth, not universally held in the 1990s or even currently; nonetheless, it is a perspective that many youth services librarians have embraced in order to create participatory partnerships with youth. ³

The core concepts of Radical Change theory, referred to as digital age principles, capture key characteristics of the digital society and include the following:

Connectivity: A sense of community or construction of social worlds that emerge from changing perspectives and expanded associations in the real world or in literature.

Interactivity: Dynamic, user-initiated, non-linear, non-sequential, complex cognitive, emotional, and physical behaviors and relationships with and among components of literature.

Access: Breaking of long-standing information barriers, bringing entrée to a wide diversity of formerly largely inaccessible opinion and opportunity in society and sophistication in literature.⁴

Radical Change theory contends that an increasing percentage of contemporary literature for youth reflects characteristics of the digital age principles and that these Radical Change books may appeal to youth growing up in the digital age. For example, indicators for Radical Change books include words and pictures reaching new levels of synergy, non-linear organization and format, multiple layers of meaning, youth who speak for themselves, subjects previously forbidden, unsolved endings, and more. ⁵

The initial development of Radical Change theory made groundbreaking connections between printed books and digital culture, which initially seemed to be competing and incompatible. Dresang writes:

When I first conceived the Radical Change theory, almost everyone agreed that digital technologies were changing radically, yet almost no one acknowledged that concomitant change in a growing cadre of printed books for youth. Moreover, those who did take note of the changes in books saw little or no relationship between these alterations and the Digital Age in which they were written, illustrated, and published. Consequently, in discussions of the integration of technology in education, printed books were often either forgotten or treated as a completely different, unrelated entity. ⁶

Radical Change is still the only widely used theory that makes this connection between printed literature for youth and the digital environment.

Theory Application and Expansion

Research studies applying the theory posited that its applicability is not limited to literature for youth. These studies applied the theory to different types of information resources beyond books. Further, studies used the theory to observe human behavior in response to the information resources that reflect the concepts of connectivity, interactivity, and access. For example, Sylvia Pantaleo explored children's understandings of and responses to diverse resources-such as books, visual art materials, films, games, and the Internet-using Radical Change theory. Her research found that children are capable of reading, comprehending, and enjoying non-traditional information resources with Radical Change characteristics. Pantaleo further suggested that these Radical Change resources can be used to teach critical thinking skills, visual literacy skills, and interpretive strategies, in addition to providing pleasurable aesthetic reading experiences for digital youth. ⁷

Dawnene D. Hasset (formerly Hammerberg) applied Radical Change theory to observe how elementary school children read and write. The theory was used to investigate how early elementary reading comprehension and writing instructions could be updated to reflect the characteristics of contemporary reading materials. She found a disconnect between the ways in which children are taught to read and write at school and the materials they are currently reading. Hasset's study suggested new technologies that promote interactive, non-linear, and hypertextual forms of communication and that call for new ways of reading and comprehending. ⁸

Radical Change theory was also used to study reading behaviors of adults. Marta J. Abele observed pre-service teachers' responses to children's books with Radical Change characteristics. The pre-service teachers not only recognized differences between Radical Change books and more traditional children's books, but also positively responded to the books with digital characteristics. Abele reported that Radical Change books require a higher level of interaction for readers and that the books would make good partners with technology in classroom teaching to attract digital youth. ⁹ These research studies from different disciplines reveal the theory's applicability to human behavior in general.

The versatility of the theory's potential applications was suggested to explain a range of contemporary information behaviors. ¹⁰ Dresang demonstrated how the theory provides a new perspective to explain the information behavior of youth in the digital environment by reexamining existing studies on the topic. She found that many of the studies tend to focus largely on the deficiencies and the need for improvement instead of recognizing the potential of new and non-traditional behaviors in this digital age. She suggested that "to view youth information-seeking behavior as generally lacking is to overlook the new behaviors nurtured and facilitated by the digital environment and to miss the golden nuggets embedded in these studies." ¹¹ The study presented in this paper attempts to report some of the "golden nuggets" using the theory's unique perspective that empowers youth. The theory argues that behaviors that were previously interpreted as a lack of skills or failure might be understood as new types of thinking and learning, which reflect properties of the digital society.

Methodology

The presented study tested and expanded Radical Change theory to investigate the information behavior of digital youth. The theory was applied throughout the entire inquiry process; it spurred the research questions of the study, provided a framework for facilitating systematic data analysis, and offered an insight to interpret digital age information behavior. ¹² The research questions included the following:

What are the key characteristics of information behavior of youth in the digital age?

1.1. How do youth act independently?

1.2. How do youth form identity and perceive others?

1.3. How do youth interact socially with others?

How can Radical Change Theory be applied and further developed to explain youth information behavior in the digital age?

The study consisted of two sequential and qualitative phases-Phase 1: content analysis of research literature; Phase 2: group and individual interviews with youth. Phase 1 of the study involved conducting content analysis of literature to identify the behaviors of contemporary youth that represent Radical Change core concepts of connectivity, interactivity, and access, as well as behaviors that do not represent these concepts. This approach to literature analysis was selected in order to cover diverse contexts, such as different age groups, tasks, and both school and everyday life settings building upon previous research efforts. The literature selected adhered to the following criteria: (1) research-based, (2) topics that address information-related activities across the disciplines, and (3) subjects born between 1992 and 2005, that is, youth ages 5-18 in 2010, the year when data was collected. An effort was made to separate the research evidence from unsubstantiated anecdotes and rhetoric. The collected literature was analyzed using a Directed Qualitative Content Analysis approach; the theory provided an initial coding framework while the researcher still immersed herself in the data to allow new themes to emerge inductively. That way the findings captured all patterns of behavior that both align and refute the theory. ¹³

Phase 1 findings were tested in Phase 2 with a purposeful sample of youth, ages 12-15, who actively engage in digital media practices using Scratch. Scratch is a graphical programming language, also referred to as an online community for Scratch users, developed for youth to create various digital projects-such as interactive stories, games, simulations, magazines, animations, music, and art-and to share these creations on the Web. ¹⁴ Scratch was identified to be an exemplary place to investigate Radical Change information behavior of youth, because Scratch members formed a vibrant community to create various user-initiated projects using a highly interactive programming tool. Different from a traditional text-based programming language, Scratch takes the building-block approach: users create programming scripts simply by dragging and dropping colorful building blocks that indicate different commands. Scratch also makes it easy for youth to import, combine, and create sound, image, and video within the program. It has been used in schools, universities, libraries, and everyday life to promote young people's twenty-first-century learning skills, such as computational skills, collaboration skills, and information and media literacies. Youth who are active members of Scratch were recognized as likely to be capable of providing deep and detailed descriptions of the topic, since they are heavily immersed in digital culture and engaged in active information behavior embedded in digital media creation practices.

The researcher identified three of the most information-intensive projects in the Scratch community: the Interactive Journalism Institute for Middle Schoolers (IJIMS), Scratch Wiki, and Scratch Resources. The goals of IJIMS included developing middle school students' interests in twenty-first-century writing, media, math, and computing skills through interactive journalism and digital storytelling. ¹⁵ The IJIMS students created an online magazine using Scratch and other digital media in a collaborative setting. They conducted interviews with members of the community, wrote articles, and worked as a group to create an interactive magazine with assistance from teachers and undergraduate mentors. Young Scratch members voluntarily initiated and maintained Scratch Wiki and Scratch Resources. Scratch Wiki is an information website where Scratch members share information on various aspects of Scratch. Scratch Resources is a digital media library developed to share tutorials, characters, and sounds, which is also contributed to by members of the Scratch community and can be used for Scratch projects.

Eight IJIMS students and four developers of Scratch Wiki and Scratch Resources were recruited for group and individual interviews, which were informed by Brenda Dervin's Sense-Making Methodology. ¹⁶ All IJIMS students were eighth-graders and included four girls and four boys from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. The four boys, ages 12-15, who developed Scratch Wiki and Scratch Resources participated in the interviews online, because they lived in different parts of the world, including Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United States; they are all fluent in English. Data analysis applied the directed qualitative content analysis technique. ¹⁷

Findings: Youth Empowerment through Learning, Creating, and Socializing

The study findings identified the patterns of information behavior that represent the concepts of Radical Change theory: connectivity, interactivity, and access (see table 1). The findings suggest a holistic perspective for observing youth information behavior as interplay between various factors, such as young people's (a) intrapersonal processes, (b) identity formation and value negotiation, and (c) social interactions. The findings propose that digital youth engage in non-linear and interactive information seeking, use, and creation activities with an increasing sense of ownership; they form identities and negotiate value systems while they interact with a range of information from different, often conflicting, information sources; and they expand the boundaries of interpersonal information behavior by connecting to diverse resources, people, and communities to meet their information needs.

Table 1. Types and Characteristics of Digital Youth Information Behavior ¹⁸

Type One: Intrapersonal Process

Personalizing

The design of one's own information environment to facilitate access to and use of information concerning personal interests.

Interactive seeking

Dynamic, fortuitous, and self-controlled information seeking behaviors.

Squirreling

The way youth extensively gather and keep information in the digital environment in the form of downloading.

Remixing

The creative reuse of information in order to produce new information or expressive materials.

Tinkering

Interactive mode of information production, which starts as an idea and the idea evolves by continual modification, trials and errors, and experimentation.

Visualizing

Affinity for visual and graphic display of information and synergistic integration of the use of text, image, and multimedia in their information behavior

Type Two: Identity and Perspectives

Self-expression

The ways youth express themselves by producing and publishing information that reflect their identity and perspectives to the connected information world.

Seeking Identity-related Information

Information seeking regarding identity issues such as gender, race, and sexuality.

Negotiating Value Systems

The ways youth process diverse perspectives and deal with ambiguity when interacting with various information, people, and communities.

Sense of Empowerment

A greater ownership and a sense of agency over information activities as a result of new and innovative behaviors and the nature of the information environment in the digital age.

Type Three: Social Interactions

Networking

The act of reaching and connecting resources, people, and communities to meet one's information needs through technological networks, such as the Internet or mobile networks.

Access to Collective Knowledge

The ways youth access and contribute to the aggregated information that is developed by individuals, especially on the Web

Collaborative Problem Solving

Information behavior performed by two or more people working together in order to complete tasks or develop new information.

Socio-emotional support

The ways youth exchange non-work related comments or actions to build rapport and trust during collaborative/collective information behavior.

This section presents selected findings from the study. These are characteristics that clearly represent the concepts of Radical Change theory when digital youth learn, create, and socialize. Interpreted through a lens of Radical Change theory, these behaviors have the potential to enhance a sense of agency in youth. Substantiated examples are from both Phase 1 (research literature analysis) and Phase 2 (interviews with Scratchers) findings.

Information Seeking. Youth in this study showed a greater ownership over their own learning in the digital environment through information seeking. Findings suggested that information seeking is a way of learning or acting that makes young people's learning more meaningful. The fact that contemporary youth have access to a range of information at their fingertips seemed to increase their confidence in learning new things, including knowledge and skills they have not been taught in school or from adults. A boy who is a Scratch Wiki administrator said that he learned the skills and knowledge needed to develop Scratch Wiki by looking around online: "It was mostly just by looking around the Internet, you know, whether from [the] Scratch website-people post various stuff there-or looking at tutorials at other wikis." The founder of Scratch Resources mentioned that the development of the online media library "was possible just because there were a lot of useful sites out there," especially since he had not taken an IT (information technology) lesson in school or elsewhere.

Contemporary youth can also look up information on sensitive topics that they are reluctant to ask other people to learn about, because nowadays they have access to information that was previously unavailable or difficult to access. Amanda Lenhart et al. reported that teens "use the internet to look for information on health topics that are hard to talk about, like drug use, sexual health or depression. A bit more than one in six (17%) internet-using teens look online for information about sensitive health topics. . . . [Teens] were more likely to look online for answers to health questions that were hard to ask of others." ¹⁸

Collective Knowledge. Digital youth have access to collective knowledge-that is, the aggregated information contributed by individuals-especially on the Web such as Wikipedia, online forums, and expert communities. It allows them to pursue in-depth knowledge on specialized topics in their interest area. While some youth with specialized interests can become discouraged due to the lack of local resources, the increasing availability of search engines, online forums, and networked publics permits them to access online resources for an initial introduction to a particular area. ¹⁹ Interviewees in Mizuko Ito et al.'s study accessed and shared information about their interests by participating in online communities. A teenage member of a fan sub community (a fan community to translate and create subtitles for foreign films or TV shows) described "how initially he was attracted to the specialty because of the depth of knowledge that he could pursue within an expert community. 'It just got interesting because other encoders were like, "here are some tips and tricks." . . . There were so many tricks in how to handle that stuff that it got pretty interesting.'" ²⁰

My interviews with youth concurred that digital youth seek out and create information on their areas of interest through an expert community, such as Scratch, where the members share and collectively build the aggregated information on specific areas of interest. For example, they use and contribute to developing collective knowledge through Scratch Wiki. It is a community effort to generate a knowledgeable source on Scratch. As an interviewee mentioned, "Well, if anyone has a question, like they wondered something, it's a spot where hopefully they'll be able to find an answer."

Remixing. Remixing provides a unique learning opportunity-that is, learning by example. Remixing is the creative reuse of information or projects to produce new information or expressive materials. Scratch was designed to make it easy for users to remix others' projects. All Scratch projects are under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, which allows freedom to share and remix projects. Once a project is remixed, the Scratch program automatically produces credit for the original project. An individual interviewee explained:

So, remixing is a very important part of Scratch. Without remixing, we wouldn't have been half as cool. And, the good thing is that because of all of this remixing, every single project out there is a tutorial. You can, so if you're interested in drawing a cake, you can just download a project and that has a cake in it and just see how it works and start playing with it. And, that's not possible on any other site or platform or whatever.

Several interviewees concurred: "When I see other people that have added more intricate, more difficult things to their Scratch project, then I'm, like, 'Oh, how did you do that?' I will ask them how to do that. And then I will want to go add that to mine to make my scratch better than it already was." Remixing in Scratch accelerates learning the programming language: "I mean, it [remixing] is really important. When you're learning . . . a typical new programming language, you have to rely on the people that are specifically supplying tutorials, and in Scratch you can just explore projects. You can say, 'Oh, I like this.' And, then you download and you see how it's made." ²¹

Findings revealed that youth feel a sense of empowerment when they create things and make a participatory contribution to the community. The Scratch Wiki administrators mentioned that they liked Scratch Wiki because it is a community effort by youth themselves: "It's quite cool how people can share information over there, because before you had just the Scratch Support on the website. And, only the [MIT] Scratch Team could upload content to there. And, it's kind of cool, how now all this help and support is provided by the community, other than the Scratch Team."

A boy mentioned how he feels when he engages in creative activities using a tool that allows flexibility and choices:

What I like about Scratch is how it's not just passive. We're actively working with media and it allows everyone to do so. And, that's important. The longer I use Scratch, the more I start to hate TV. It's very weird. But, I mean, TV is just such a passive medium. You just look at it. You're looking at the television and it just comes to you for a long time. And, I guess, I can still watch a nice movie, but it has to be nice. Just this annoying television shows [ sic], well, it's really annoying, just so passive and you just lose your time sitting without doing anything, and I sort of like to be productive. And, I like how Scratch allows me to do it, but I bet there are more people who like to be productive, and it also allows them to be. With script you can basically do whatever you want. You can make a very big diversity of projects, and you can use it to make PowerPoint-like presentations with some graphics. I already did for school. That's very cool. But, you can make games, information about yourself, and that's what I like about it. You're not really restricted to games or whatever, you just start and do whatever you want. ²²

Young people's creative activities are a way of expressing themselves. The digital environment in particular offers young people the chance to be powerful and to express their identity and creativity. ²³ Youth find value in expressing themselves online, because self-expression online plays several roles in their identity construction, including self-reflection, catharsis, self-documentation, identity experimentation, and social validation of self from their audience. ²⁴ Meanwhile, by creating and publishing information within a specific area of interest, young people define themselves as experts, geeks, freaks, or artists within particular communities. ²⁵ For instance, personal web pages maintained by youth reveal a range of information and opinions of youth, such as favorite music, sports, daily experiences, jokes, photos, and more. ²⁶

Scratchers in this study were engaged in expressive activities, particularly digital media production, in both school and everyday life. An IJIMS participant mentioned, "I have been using Scratch [when I was not] in IJIMS. One particular time [I created Scratch projects] was just on my own . . . trying out what was on my mind." An interviewee's description revealed how his Scratch production is a way of self-expression:

Interviewee: It [working with Scratch] does help because that's one of those programs where you're not limited. You can do a lot of things. It's pretty much putting your emotions in a computer screen. And it kind of helps. It's kind of relieving in a way.

Interviewer: Can you explain the word "relieving"?

Interviewee: You can just put it out there, and you know that it's down there, so you can go back and look at it another time. So if you were feeling sad, you could go there, and you could just make a Scratch and just let it out.

Socializing

Youth have an intrinsic need for social and connected information behaviors. ²⁷ Traditional interpersonal information behaviors where youth seek and share information with peers, family members, teachers, and librarians in their local communities are still prevalent. Digital youth, however, are capable of expanding the boundaries of their interpersonal information behaviors by interacting with diverse people and forming communities of practice beyond geographical restrictions. ²⁸

By the time the interviews were conducted in 2010, Scratch did not provide many communication tools other than public forums and comments. Despite that, Scratchers from different parts of the world collaborated all the time. An interviewee discussed Scratch members' strong need for collaboration:

Well, the weird [thing] about people collaborating on Scratch is that except for remixing, there is really nothing that helps you collaborate. And, people just find their way of doing it. So, there are Scratch Companies you might have heard of. So, people form a group using a gallery. They usually all just use technologies that were not intended to be used as a collaborative platform. . . . [T]hat also makes collaboration on Scratch cool. People seem to be, they really want to do it and they don't just do it because it's there. They find their own way of collaborating. That's really cool.

All interviewees in Phase 2 were actively interacting with others during their problem-solving or knowledge-creation activities-that is, creation of an online magazine in IJIMS and development of Scratch Wiki and Scratch Resources. Scratch Wiki itself, in particular, is where youth collaboratively create knowledge about Scratch. The nature of Wiki-that is, being edited by anyone and having the ability to see previous versions-enhances the collaborative/collective aspect of Wiki as an information resource, as discussed by two participants:

As far as collaboration, what's really nice on the Wiki is that you can of course compare the text from the previous revisions, [which] I think is one of the helpful things about collaboration, which you can't always do, like, maybe you're in a collaboration and you remake a project. You can't really see directly what changed.

The good thing about the Wiki is that it can be edited by everyone. And, still always stores older versions. So, when someone does something wrong, they don't have to feel shy or whatever, you can just revert the edit.

During collaborative problem solving or creation activities, youth frequently exchange non-task-related comments or actions to build rapport and trust. Although they have never met in person, the individual interviewees mentioned that they make "lots of good friends in Scratch." Interviewees point out the many modern technologies that help them overcome the geographical distance and build relationships and trust one another:

There's stuff to help people talk online. It can help you make friendships and things, even without meeting, though it is kind of sad, like oh, you probably will never be able to meet this person.

On Scratch, there are the forums. And as you use them, you start to see people and sort of generally become friends with some of them. . . . If we share interest in something, then it helps. And the people that we were in with our collaboration group, they're friendly.

Another interviewee concurred that one could build relationships and trust online:

In the modern Internet, you know, here we use emoticons, you know, especially if you're a kid, you understand, you know, like texting-you understand how to use abbreviations and kind of how people act. And, for example, you end up-people will exaggerate things of course, you know, but it's all part of the process. Yeah. We also have to, like, when meeting new people, you know, we have to assume good faith. We never try to act-assume that they're trying to do something bad or assume that they were trying to do a certain thing. So that's kind of an important thing about being on the wiki.

Opportunities and Challenges

The findings show the ways in which digital youth have an increased sense of control over learning, creative, and social aspects of their life; as Dresang suggested earlier, Net Generation youth are increasingly in the driver's seat. ²⁹ Digital age information behavior offers a new type of learning opportunity, which supports both autonomous and social learning. Information seeking-especially in which youth can choose what to explore in what order in the digital environment-allows them self-taught and autonomous problem solving. Beyond seeking and use, engaging in productive and creative information behavior seems to provide digital age youth with an enhanced sense of empowerment. As information creators, digital youth have a growing chance to be powerful and express their creativity and identity. They also create information collaboratively and contribute to the development of collective knowledge. Moreover, youth feel a sense of agency during their social interactions, especially when their voices are accepted and they can make a meaningful contribution to the information world to which they belong. As demonstrated in the study, Radical Change theory provides a unique perspective to ferret out the potential of non-traditional behaviors to empower youth who are immersed in digital culture.

The theory, however, is not naive enough to overlook challenges in the digital environment. While most digital youth appreciate an increasing amount of information at their fingertips, processing a range of information demands a high level of thinking skills and information-credibility judgment. Today's youth must be equipped with digital information literacy skills in order to have a meaningful learning experience through information seeking. The creative information behavior of youth raises ethical issues concerning ownership as well as the problem of a digital participation gap, because advanced technologies that facilitate creation require a high cost. Collective knowledge can be challenged by quality concerns since anyone without traditional authority can contribute. Furthermore, constant connectivity and increasing online interaction bring up issues of privacy and online safety. The availability of diverse perspectives does not always lead to a broadening perspective or high tolerance when young people's social interaction is deliberately limited to a circle of like-minded people. Such challenges have implications for the future of Radical Change theory.

Future of the Theory

While the theory may not provide direct applications to all those challenges in the digital environment, Radical Change theory offers a valuable perspective for tackling the difficult issues for both professionals and scholars. The theory guides us to choose an approach to supporting a sense of agency in youth, instead of being intimidated by the dangers of the digital environment and attempting to protect "the innocence of youth" by limiting their access to information and technologies. I believe that the implications of the theory include the significant role of information professionals guiding and supporting digital youth in ways that do not stifle the digital age principles of connectivity, interactivity, and access. The principle of access can be seen as providing the foundation for Radical Change in both information resources and youth behaviors. Dresang explains that "an affirmative regard for Radical Change resources rests in part on a belief that the principles of intellectual freedom (based on the First Amendment) are applicable to youth as well as to adults." She further suggests that "the danger of withholding information from youth far exceeds the danger of providing it. The onus is on us, the adults who care for and work with young people, to guide them to it, give them the background to sort through it and interpret it, and write, edit, and publish it in books that give them the opportunity to reflect upon and absorb it." ³⁰ Fostering digital youth's twenty-first-century skills, such as digital information literacy, is key in order for them to truly take advantage of opportunities through the interactive and connected digital environment.

I offer the following diagram as a potential way that Radical Change theory can guide future research. It is a framework for studying the information behavior of digital youth, radical resources, and the outcomes for youth in obtaining twenty-first-century skills. Dresang recognized the framework to be "the next step in understanding digital age children's information behavior and the role of libraries in meeting their needs." ³¹ The diagram flows from the digital age principles-interactivity, connectivity, and access-to the Radical Change resources and behaviors that represent the principles. It depicts interaction between resources and people. Owing to its emphasis on the synergistic combination of users and information resources in the digital age, ³² researchers can benefit from the theory in investigating how digital age resources and changing users interact and influence one another. The theory can also be applied to exploring the effectiveness of Radical Change resources in promoting the twenty-first-century skills of digital youth, just as Pantaleo's findings proposed that Radical Change resources are tools to teach critical thinking skills, visual literacy, and more. ³³ Finally, the diagram calls for future research that explores how the interaction between changing resources and youth may have an impact on youth obtaining twenty-first-century skills, because these are critical skills in enhancing a sense of agency in youth by increasing their capacity to learn, create, and socialize.

Notes

1. Eliza T. Dresang, Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1999), 58.

2. Ibid., xxiv.

3. Eliza T. Dresang, "Digital Age Libraries and Youth: Learning Labs, Literacy Leaders, Radical Resources," in The Information Behavior of a New Generation : Children and Teens in the 21st Century, ed. Jamshid Beheshti and J. Andrew Large (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013), 93-116.

4. Eliza T. Dresang and Bowie Kotrla, "Radical Change Theory and Synergistic Reading for Digital Age Youth," Journal of Aesthetics Education 43 (2009): 94.

5. Dresang, Radical Change.

6. Eliza T. Dresang, "Radical Change Revisited: Dynamic Digital Age Books for Youth," Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education 8 (September 13, 2008), para 2, http://www.citejournal.org/vol8/iss3/seminal/article2.cfm.

7. Sylvia Pantaleo, Exploring Student Response to Contemporary Picturebooks (Toronto Italian Studies) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).

8. Dawnene D. Hassett, "Reading Hypertextually: Children's Literature and Comprehension Instruction," New Horizons for Learning, March 22, 2008, http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/literacy/hassett.htm; Dawnene D. Hammerberg, "Reading and Writing 'Hypertexually': Children's Literature, Technology, and Early Writing Instruction," Language Arts 78 (2001): 207-16.

9. Marta J. Abele, Responses to Radical Change Children's Books by Preservice Teachers (Capella University, 2003).

10. Eliza T. Dresang, "The Information-Seeking Behavior of Youth in the Digital Environment," Library Trends 54 (2005): 178-96; Eliza T. Dresang, "Radical Change," in Theories of Information Behavior, ed. Karen E. Fisher, Sanda Erdelez, and Lynne McKechnie (Medford, NJ: Information Today, 2005), 298-302; Eliza T. Dresang and Kyungwon Koh, "Radical Change Theory, Youth Information Behavior, and School Libraries," Library Trends 58, no. 1 (2009): 26-50.

11. Dresang, "The Information-Seeking Behavior of Youth in the Digital Environment."

12. Kyungwon Koh, "Theory-to-Research-to-Theory Strategy: A Research-Based Expansion of Radical Change Theory," Library & Information Science Research 64, no. 9 (2013): 1826-41, doi:10.1016/j.lisr.2012.09.003; Kyungwon Koh, "Adolescents' Information-Creating Behavior Embedded in Digital Media Practice Using Scratch," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 64, no. 9 (2013): 1826-41, doi:10.1002/asi.22878.

13. Hsiu Hsieh and Sarah E Shannon, "Three Approaches to Qualitative Content Analysis," Qualitative Health Research 15 (2005): 1277-88; Yan Zhang and Barbara M. Wildemuth, "Qualitative Analysis of Content," in Applications of Social Research Methods to Questions in Information and Library Science, ed. Barbara M. Wildemuth (Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2009), 308-19; Koh, "Theory-to-Research-to-Theory Strategy."

14. MIT Media Lab, "Scratch: Imagine, Program, Share," 2012, http://scratch.mit.edu/.

15. IJIMS, "Interactive Journalism Institute for Middle Schoolers," 2010, http://www.tcnj.edu/~ijims/.

16. Brenda Dervin and Rea Devakos, "Deep, Efficient, and Dialogic Study of Undergraduate Information Seeking and Use: A Methodological Exploration," 2010, http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/asist2010poster.pdf; Brenda Dervin, "Focus Groups for Participatory Research: Design Using Systematic Dialogic Principles Drawn from Sense-Making Methodology," 2007.

17. Koh, "Theory-to-Research-to-Theory Strategy"; Koh, "Adolescents' Information-Creating Behavior Embedded in Digital Media Practice Using Scratch."

18. Amanda Lenhart et al., "Social Media and Mobile Internet Use among Teens and Young Adults," 2010, 26-27, http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults/Summary-of-Findings.aspx.

19. Mizuko Ito et al., Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009).

20. Ibid., 273.

21. Koh, "Adolescents' Information-Creating Behavior Embedded in Digital Media Practice Using Scratch."

22. Ibid.

23. Rebekah Willett, "Consumer Citizens Online: Structure, Agency, and Gender in Online Participation," in Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, ed. David Buckingham (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 49-69.

24. Susannah Stern, "Producing Sites, Exploring Identities: Youth Online Authorship," in Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, ed. Buckingham, 95-118.

25. Ito et al., Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out.

26. Sandra Weber and Claudia Mitchell, "Imaging, Keyboarding, and Posting Identities: Young People and New Media Technologies," in Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, ed. Buckingham, 25-47.

27. Dresang, "The Information-Seeking Behavior of Youth in the Digital Environment," 20.

28. Cecilia R Aragon et al., "A Tale of Two Online Communities: Fostering Collaboration and Creativity in Scientists and Children," Proceedings of the Seventh ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition, 2009, 9-18.

29. Dresang, Radical Change.

30. Ibid., xv, xvi.

31. Dresang, "Digital Age Libraries and Youth: Learning Labs, Literacy Leaders, Radical Resources," 112.

32. Dresang and Kotrla, "Radical Change Theory and Synergistic Reading for Digital Age Youth."

33. Pantaleo, Exploring Student Response to Contemporary Picturebooks.

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Radical Change Theory: Framework for Empowering Digital Youth

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Kyungwon Koh, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma Koh, Kyungwon. " Radical Change Theory: Framework for Empowering Digital Youth." Journal of Research on Libraries & Young Adults 5 (2015): n. page. Web. . Eliza T. Dresang influenced numerous researchers and professionals by equipping them to understand and better serve digital youth.

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The core concepts of the theory are also known as the "digital age principles" are:
Connectivity- refers to connections of hypertext.
Interactivity- "refers to dynamic , nonlinear, non-sequential, complex books & other resources & associated learning and information behaviors."
Access- refers to breaking of longstanding information barriers

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The theory was developed in the mid 1990s by Eliza T. Dresang. It started as a way to explain the book "Black and White" but it "was not embraced by adults" at the time.

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Successfully reported this slideshow.

Published on

1. 1. Radical Change Theory developed by Eliza T. Dresang and Kyungwon Koh An Expanded Theory

2. 2. What is it? <ul><li>The theory of Radical Change is based on the digital age principles of interactivity, connectivity, and access. </li></ul><ul><li>It provides a promising theoretical framework for explaining contemporary changes in information behavior and resources as well as for serving as a guide for investigative studies and professional practice. </li></ul>

3. 3. Especially Important Tool for School Libraries in: <ul><li>Assessing and planning for the radical changes in students </li></ul><ul><li>Their information needs </li></ul><ul><li>Expectations for resources </li></ul>

4. 4. A Theory Expansion <ul><li>Originally developed in the 1990s to explain why the watershed picture book, "Black and White" (Macaulay, 1990), winner of the 1991 Caldecott Medal winner, was not embraced by adults. </li></ul><ul><li>Over the course of the last decade of the twentieth century, this explanatory theory rooted in digital age principles, was developed to explain not only the changes evident in "Black and White" but also those that appeared in many other contemporary books for youth. </li></ul>

5. 5. INTERACTIVTY <ul><li>Refers to dynamic, nonlinear, and nonsequential learning and information behavior with an increasing sense of control by end-users </li></ul>

6. 6. CONNECTIVITY <ul><li>Refers to sense of community or construction of social worlds that emerge from changing perspectives and expanded associations </li></ul>

7. 7. ACCESS <ul><li>Refers to breaking of longstanding information barriers, bringing entrée to a wide diversity of formerly inaccessible opinion </li></ul>

8. 8. Dresang's Original Radical Change Typology Applied to Youth Literature

9. 9. Expansion of Radical Age Theory Applied to Youth Information Behavior

10. 10. 1. Changing Forms of Seeking Information and Learning <ul><li>How do they seek information and learn? </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Obtain information through a variety of media sources </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Demonstrate a preference for graphic and visual information </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Multitask </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Seek information nonlinearly and non-sequentially </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Develop self-defined and controlled path </li></ul></ul>

11. 11. 2. Changing Perspectives <ul><li>How do they perceive themselves and others? </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Express opinions for themselves </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Demonstrate identity by creating information </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Portray flexible and multiple identities </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Encounter information from various perspectives </li></ul></ul>

12. 12. 3. How Do They Access Information and Seek Community <ul><li>How do they access information and seek community? </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Obtain instant access to a wide array of information </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Seek, share and create information creatively </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Form new types of social networks </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Participate in community engagement </li></ul></ul>

13. 13. What does Radical Change Theory Look Like?

14. 14. The Next Step: Proof of Concept <ul><li>Establish indicators for the characteristics </li></ul><ul><li>Identify concrete observable behavior </li></ul><ul><li>Using specific information seeking situations </li></ul>

15. 15. Bayesian Network Modeling Techniques <ul><li>Graphical structures that represent the relationships between characteristic behaviors by applying statistical rules of probability. </li></ul><ul><li>Bayesian Networks automatically update relationships and relative weights between each variable as observable data are entered. </li></ul>

16. 16. What will Radical Change Theory do for Librarians and Information Specialists? <ul><li>Lead to an assessment of the ways in which digital age information-seeking behavior and competence in twenty-first century information-seeking skills are correlated. </li></ul><ul><li>Provide more evidence-based assertions about youth information behavior and on the impact of technology. </li></ul><ul><li>Give confidence and guidance to school librarians and teachers </li></ul>

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Successfully reported this slideshow. Published on 1. Radical Change Theory developed by Eliza T. Dresang and Kyungwon Koh An Expanded Theory 2. What is it? The theory of Radical Change is based on the digital age principles of interactivity, connectivity, and access.

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There are 3 types of the radical change.
1. Changing forms of formats
2. Changing perspectives
3.Changing Boundaries

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Studies show that ow not only do people use this theory for literature reasons, they also use it to "to observe human behavior in response to the information resources that reflect the concepts of connectivity, interactivity, and access."

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The Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults

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Kyungwon Koh, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma

Koh, Kyungwon. " Radical Change Theory: Framework for Empowering Digital Youth." Journal of Research on Libraries & Young Adults 5 (2015): n. page. Web. <Date accessed>.

Abstract

Eliza T. Dresang influenced numerous researchers and professionals by equipping them to understand and better serve digital youth. This paper revisits her theory of Radical Change, which explains the synergistic combination of changing resources and youth in the digital age. The presented research applies and extends the theory by investigating the information behavior of digital youth. The study has two phases -Phase 1: content analysis of research literature; Phase 2: group and individual interviews with young adults who are members of an online community called Scratch. Selected findings illustrate the ways in which digital youth have an increased sense of control over learning, creative, and social aspects of their life. The study demonstrates that Radical Change theory provides a unique perspective to ferret out the potential of non-traditional information behaviors. The theory continues to be a tool for enhancing a sense of agency for digital youth by increasing their capacity to learn, create, and socialize. Future research applying the theory could explore how the dynamic interactions between changing resources and youth may have an impact on youth obtaining twenty-first-century skills.

Introduction

Eliza T. Dresang was best known for her theory of Radical Change, which explains changes in information resources and human information behavior in the current digital age. Her theory and research have influenced numerous researchers and professionals as they seek to understand digital youth. In this paper, the term "digital youth" refers to contemporary children and young adults (ages birth through eighteen years) who were born into this interactive and connected digital culture, regardless of their varying levels of access to technologies or digital media skills. In order to honor and remember Eliza T. Dresang, this paper attempts to answer the following questions:

Q1. What is the theory of Radical Change?

Q2. How does the theory help us understand the information behavior of digital youth? That is, what radical changes do contemporary youth experience when they interact with information?

Q3. What does the future of the theory look like?

To answer these questions, I begin with a review of Radical Change theory and research that has applied this theory. I will then present selected findings from my dissertation research, which was conducted with the guidance of Eliza T. Dresang. I had the privilege of working with her directly and take up her pioneering work of Radical Change by applying, testing, and extending the theory. The findings demonstrate the value of the theory in explaining the information behavior of digital youth. This paper concludes with a look toward the future of the theory.

The emphasis of this paper is on the theory's perspective on youth empowerment, as Dresang had always strived for empowering youth through her scholarly, professional, and personal achievements. The theory of Radical Change is fundamentally grounded in her belief in "the child-as-capable-and-seeking-connection." ¹ This paper proposes the future of the theory as a tool for enhancing a sense of agency of digital youth.

Radical Change Theory

Radical Change theory suggests that many of the changes in information resources and human behavior in this digital age can be explained through these core concepts: connectivity, interactivity, and access. While the theory is currently being used to investigate both resources and behavior, it was originally developed to explain changes in youth literature. The theory's explanatory power to study human behavior was revealed later by research studies that applied the theory across disciplines, such as library and information studies, education, and English.

Initial Development: Youth Literature with Digital Characteristics

Radical Change theory was initially developed in the mid-1990s to explain changes in youth literature in the digital age, in which society became increasingly more interactive and connected through digital networks. Serving as a lens through which to examine, explain, and use contemporary literature for youth growing up in the digital age, the theory was developed based on the following four assumptions, which support children's sense of agency:

Children are capable and are seeking connections.

The digital environment nurtures children's capabilities.

Handheld books offer digital-age connections.

Adults and youth are partners in the digital world.²

Dresang explained that these assumptions are an optimistic view of youth, not universally held in the 1990s or even currently; nonetheless, it is a perspective that many youth services librarians have embraced in order to create participatory partnerships with youth. ³

The core concepts of Radical Change theory, referred to as digital age principles, capture key characteristics of the digital society and include the following:

Connectivity: A sense of community or construction of social worlds that emerge from changing perspectives and expanded associations in the real world or in literature.

Interactivity: Dynamic, user-initiated, non-linear, non-sequential, complex cognitive, emotional, and physical behaviors and relationships with and among components of literature.

Access: Breaking of long-standing information barriers, bringing entrée to a wide diversity of formerly largely inaccessible opinion and opportunity in society and sophistication in literature.⁴

Radical Change theory contends that an increasing percentage of contemporary literature for youth reflects characteristics of the digital age principles and that these Radical Change books may appeal to youth growing up in the digital age. For example, indicators for Radical Change books include words and pictures reaching new levels of synergy, non-linear organization and format, multiple layers of meaning, youth who speak for themselves, subjects previously forbidden, unsolved endings, and more. ⁵

The initial development of Radical Change theory made groundbreaking connections between printed books and digital culture, which initially seemed to be competing and incompatible. Dresang writes:

When I first conceived the Radical Change theory, almost everyone agreed that digital technologies were changing radically, yet almost no one acknowledged that concomitant change in a growing cadre of printed books for youth. Moreover, those who did take note of the changes in books saw little or no relationship between these alterations and the Digital Age in which they were written, illustrated, and published. Consequently, in discussions of the integration of technology in education, printed books were often either forgotten or treated as a completely different, unrelated entity. ⁶

Radical Change is still the only widely used theory that makes this connection between printed literature for youth and the digital environment.

Theory Application and Expansion

Research studies applying the theory posited that its applicability is not limited to literature for youth. These studies applied the theory to different types of information resources beyond books. Further, studies used the theory to observe human behavior in response to the information resources that reflect the concepts of connectivity, interactivity, and access. For example, Sylvia Pantaleo explored children's understandings of and responses to diverse resources-such as books, visual art materials, films, games, and the Internet-using Radical Change theory. Her research found that children are capable of reading, comprehending, and enjoying non-traditional information resources with Radical Change characteristics. Pantaleo further suggested that these Radical Change resources can be used to teach critical thinking skills, visual literacy skills, and interpretive strategies, in addition to providing pleasurable aesthetic reading experiences for digital youth. ⁷

Dawnene D. Hasset (formerly Hammerberg) applied Radical Change theory to observe how elementary school children read and write. The theory was used to investigate how early elementary reading comprehension and writing instructions could be updated to reflect the characteristics of contemporary reading materials. She found a disconnect between the ways in which children are taught to read and write at school and the materials they are currently reading. Hasset's study suggested new technologies that promote interactive, non-linear, and hypertextual forms of communication and that call for new ways of reading and comprehending. ⁸

Radical Change theory was also used to study reading behaviors of adults. Marta J. Abele observed pre-service teachers' responses to children's books with Radical Change characteristics. The pre-service teachers not only recognized differences between Radical Change books and more traditional children's books, but also positively responded to the books with digital characteristics. Abele reported that Radical Change books require a higher level of interaction for readers and that the books would make good partners with technology in classroom teaching to attract digital youth. ⁹ These research studies from different disciplines reveal the theory's applicability to human behavior in general.

The versatility of the theory's potential applications was suggested to explain a range of contemporary information behaviors. ¹⁰ Dresang demonstrated how the theory provides a new perspective to explain the information behavior of youth in the digital environment by reexamining existing studies on the topic. She found that many of the studies tend to focus largely on the deficiencies and the need for improvement instead of recognizing the potential of new and non-traditional behaviors in this digital age. She suggested that "to view youth information-seeking behavior as generally lacking is to overlook the new behaviors nurtured and facilitated by the digital environment and to miss the golden nuggets embedded in these studies." ¹¹ The study presented in this paper attempts to report some of the "golden nuggets" using the theory's unique perspective that empowers youth. The theory argues that behaviors that were previously interpreted as a lack of skills or failure might be understood as new types of thinking and learning, which reflect properties of the digital society.

Methodology

The presented study tested and expanded Radical Change theory to investigate the information behavior of digital youth. The theory was applied throughout the entire inquiry process; it spurred the research questions of the study, provided a framework for facilitating systematic data analysis, and offered an insight to interpret digital age information behavior. ¹² The research questions included the following:

What are the key characteristics of information behavior of youth in the digital age?

1.1. How do youth act independently?

1.2. How do youth form identity and perceive others?

1.3. How do youth interact socially with others?

How can Radical Change Theory be applied and further developed to explain youth information behavior in the digital age?

The study consisted of two sequential and qualitative phases-Phase 1: content analysis of research literature; Phase 2: group and individual interviews with youth. Phase 1 of the study involved conducting content analysis of literature to identify the behaviors of contemporary youth that represent Radical Change core concepts of connectivity, interactivity, and access, as well as behaviors that do not represent these concepts. This approach to literature analysis was selected in order to cover diverse contexts, such as different age groups, tasks, and both school and everyday life settings building upon previous research efforts. The literature selected adhered to the following criteria: (1) research-based, (2) topics that address information-related activities across the disciplines, and (3) subjects born between 1992 and 2005, that is, youth ages 5-18 in 2010, the year when data was collected. An effort was made to separate the research evidence from unsubstantiated anecdotes and rhetoric. The collected literature was analyzed using a Directed Qualitative Content Analysis approach; the theory provided an initial coding framework while the researcher still immersed herself in the data to allow new themes to emerge inductively. That way the findings captured all patterns of behavior that both align and refute the theory. ¹³

Phase 1 findings were tested in Phase 2 with a purposeful sample of youth, ages 12-15, who actively engage in digital media practices using Scratch. Scratch is a graphical programming language, also referred to as an online community for Scratch users, developed for youth to create various digital projects-such as interactive stories, games, simulations, magazines, animations, music, and art-and to share these creations on the Web. ¹⁴ Scratch was identified to be an exemplary place to investigate Radical Change information behavior of youth, because Scratch members formed a vibrant community to create various user-initiated projects using a highly interactive programming tool. Different from a traditional text-based programming language, Scratch takes the building-block approach: users create programming scripts simply by dragging and dropping colorful building blocks that indicate different commands. Scratch also makes it easy for youth to import, combine, and create sound, image, and video within the program. It has been used in schools, universities, libraries, and everyday life to promote young people's twenty-first-century learning skills, such as computational skills, collaboration skills, and information and media literacies. Youth who are active members of Scratch were recognized as likely to be capable of providing deep and detailed descriptions of the topic, since they are heavily immersed in digital culture and engaged in active information behavior embedded in digital media creation practices.

The researcher identified three of the most information-intensive projects in the Scratch community: the Interactive Journalism Institute for Middle Schoolers (IJIMS), Scratch Wiki, and Scratch Resources. The goals of IJIMS included developing middle school students' interests in twenty-first-century writing, media, math, and computing skills through interactive journalism and digital storytelling. ¹⁵ The IJIMS students created an online magazine using Scratch and other digital media in a collaborative setting. They conducted interviews with members of the community, wrote articles, and worked as a group to create an interactive magazine with assistance from teachers and undergraduate mentors. Young Scratch members voluntarily initiated and maintained Scratch Wiki and Scratch Resources. Scratch Wiki is an information website where Scratch members share information on various aspects of Scratch. Scratch Resources is a digital media library developed to share tutorials, characters, and sounds, which is also contributed to by members of the Scratch community and can be used for Scratch projects.

Eight IJIMS students and four developers of Scratch Wiki and Scratch Resources were recruited for group and individual interviews, which were informed by Brenda Dervin's Sense-Making Methodology. ¹⁶ All IJIMS students were eighth-graders and included four girls and four boys from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. The four boys, ages 12-15, who developed Scratch Wiki and Scratch Resources participated in the interviews online, because they lived in different parts of the world, including Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United States; they are all fluent in English. Data analysis applied the directed qualitative content analysis technique. ¹⁷

Findings: Youth Empowerment through Learning, Creating, and Socializing

The study findings identified the patterns of information behavior that represent the concepts of Radical Change theory: connectivity, interactivity, and access (see table 1). The findings suggest a holistic perspective for observing youth information behavior as interplay between various factors, such as young people's (a) intrapersonal processes, (b) identity formation and value negotiation, and (c) social interactions. The findings propose that digital youth engage in non-linear and interactive information seeking, use, and creation activities with an increasing sense of ownership; they form identities and negotiate value systems while they interact with a range of information from different, often conflicting, information sources; and they expand the boundaries of interpersonal information behavior by connecting to diverse resources, people, and communities to meet their information needs.

Table 1. Types and Characteristics of Digital Youth Information Behavior ¹⁸

Type One: Intrapersonal Process

Personalizing

The design of one's own information environment to facilitate access to and use of information concerning personal interests.

Interactive seeking

Dynamic, fortuitous, and self-controlled information seeking behaviors.

Squirreling

The way youth extensively gather and keep information in the digital environment in the form of downloading.

Remixing

The creative reuse of information in order to produce new information or expressive materials.

Tinkering

Interactive mode of information production, which starts as an idea and the idea evolves by continual modification, trials and errors, and experimentation.

Visualizing

Affinity for visual and graphic display of information and synergistic integration of the use of text, image, and multimedia in their information behavior

Type Two: Identity and Perspectives

Self-expression

The ways youth express themselves by producing and publishing information that reflect their identity and perspectives to the connected information world.

Seeking Identity-related Information

Information seeking regarding identity issues such as gender, race, and sexuality.

Negotiating Value Systems

The ways youth process diverse perspectives and deal with ambiguity when interacting with various information, people, and communities.

Sense of Empowerment

A greater ownership and a sense of agency over information activities as a result of new and innovative behaviors and the nature of the information environment in the digital age.

Type Three: Social Interactions

Networking

The act of reaching and connecting resources, people, and communities to meet one's information needs through technological networks, such as the Internet or mobile networks.

Access to Collective Knowledge

The ways youth access and contribute to the aggregated information that is developed by individuals, especially on the Web

Collaborative Problem Solving

Information behavior performed by two or more people working together in order to complete tasks or develop new information.

Socio-emotional support

The ways youth exchange non-work related comments or actions to build rapport and trust during collaborative/collective information behavior.

This section presents selected findings from the study. These are characteristics that clearly represent the concepts of Radical Change theory when digital youth learn, create, and socialize. Interpreted through a lens of Radical Change theory, these behaviors have the potential to enhance a sense of agency in youth. Substantiated examples are from both Phase 1 (research literature analysis) and Phase 2 (interviews with Scratchers) findings.

Information Seeking. Youth in this study showed a greater ownership over their own learning in the digital environment through information seeking. Findings suggested that information seeking is a way of learning or acting that makes young people's learning more meaningful. The fact that contemporary youth have access to a range of information at their fingertips seemed to increase their confidence in learning new things, including knowledge and skills they have not been taught in school or from adults. A boy who is a Scratch Wiki administrator said that he learned the skills and knowledge needed to develop Scratch Wiki by looking around online: "It was mostly just by looking around the Internet, you know, whether from [the] Scratch website-people post various stuff there-or looking at tutorials at other wikis." The founder of Scratch Resources mentioned that the development of the online media library "was possible just because there were a lot of useful sites out there," especially since he had not taken an IT (information technology) lesson in school or elsewhere.

Contemporary youth can also look up information on sensitive topics that they are reluctant to ask other people to learn about, because nowadays they have access to information that was previously unavailable or difficult to access. Amanda Lenhart et al. reported that teens "use the internet to look for information on health topics that are hard to talk about, like drug use, sexual health or depression. A bit more than one in six (17%) internet-using teens look online for information about sensitive health topics. . . . [Teens] were more likely to look online for answers to health questions that were hard to ask of others." ¹⁸

Collective Knowledge. Digital youth have access to collective knowledge-that is, the aggregated information contributed by individuals-especially on the Web such as Wikipedia, online forums, and expert communities. It allows them to pursue in-depth knowledge on specialized topics in their interest area. While some youth with specialized interests can become discouraged due to the lack of local resources, the increasing availability of search engines, online forums, and networked publics permits them to access online resources for an initial introduction to a particular area. ¹⁹ Interviewees in Mizuko Ito et al.'s study accessed and shared information about their interests by participating in online communities. A teenage member of a fan sub community (a fan community to translate and create subtitles for foreign films or TV shows) described "how initially he was attracted to the specialty because of the depth of knowledge that he could pursue within an expert community. 'It just got interesting because other encoders were like, "here are some tips and tricks." . . . There were so many tricks in how to handle that stuff that it got pretty interesting.'" ²⁰

My interviews with youth concurred that digital youth seek out and create information on their areas of interest through an expert community, such as Scratch, where the members share and collectively build the aggregated information on specific areas of interest. For example, they use and contribute to developing collective knowledge through Scratch Wiki. It is a community effort to generate a knowledgeable source on Scratch. As an interviewee mentioned, "Well, if anyone has a question, like they wondered something, it's a spot where hopefully they'll be able to find an answer."

Remixing. Remixing provides a unique learning opportunity-that is, learning by example. Remixing is the creative reuse of information or projects to produce new information or expressive materials. Scratch was designed to make it easy for users to remix others' projects. All Scratch projects are under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, which allows freedom to share and remix projects. Once a project is remixed, the Scratch program automatically produces credit for the original project. An individual interviewee explained:

So, remixing is a very important part of Scratch. Without remixing, we wouldn't have been half as cool. And, the good thing is that because of all of this remixing, every single project out there is a tutorial. You can, so if you're interested in drawing a cake, you can just download a project and that has a cake in it and just see how it works and start playing with it. And, that's not possible on any other site or platform or whatever.

Several interviewees concurred: "When I see other people that have added more intricate, more difficult things to their Scratch project, then I'm, like, 'Oh, how did you do that?' I will ask them how to do that. And then I will want to go add that to mine to make my scratch better than it already was." Remixing in Scratch accelerates learning the programming language: "I mean, it [remixing] is really important. When you're learning . . . a typical new programming language, you have to rely on the people that are specifically supplying tutorials, and in Scratch you can just explore projects. You can say, 'Oh, I like this.' And, then you download and you see how it's made." ²¹

Findings revealed that youth feel a sense of empowerment when they create things and make a participatory contribution to the community. The Scratch Wiki administrators mentioned that they liked Scratch Wiki because it is a community effort by youth themselves: "It's quite cool how people can share information over there, because before you had just the Scratch Support on the website. And, only the [MIT] Scratch Team could upload content to there. And, it's kind of cool, how now all this help and support is provided by the community, other than the Scratch Team."

A boy mentioned how he feels when he engages in creative activities using a tool that allows flexibility and choices:

What I like about Scratch is how it's not just passive. We're actively working with media and it allows everyone to do so. And, that's important. The longer I use Scratch, the more I start to hate TV. It's very weird. But, I mean, TV is just such a passive medium. You just look at it. You're looking at the television and it just comes to you for a long time. And, I guess, I can still watch a nice movie, but it has to be nice. Just this annoying television shows [ sic], well, it's really annoying, just so passive and you just lose your time sitting without doing anything, and I sort of like to be productive. And, I like how Scratch allows me to do it, but I bet there are more people who like to be productive, and it also allows them to be. With script you can basically do whatever you want. You can make a very big diversity of projects, and you can use it to make PowerPoint-like presentations with some graphics. I already did for school. That's very cool. But, you can make games, information about yourself, and that's what I like about it. You're not really restricted to games or whatever, you just start and do whatever you want. ²²

Young people's creative activities are a way of expressing themselves. The digital environment in particular offers young people the chance to be powerful and to express their identity and creativity. ²³ Youth find value in expressing themselves online, because self-expression online plays several roles in their identity construction, including self-reflection, catharsis, self-documentation, identity experimentation, and social validation of self from their audience. ²⁴ Meanwhile, by creating and publishing information within a specific area of interest, young people define themselves as experts, geeks, freaks, or artists within particular communities. ²⁵ For instance, personal web pages maintained by youth reveal a range of information and opinions of youth, such as favorite music, sports, daily experiences, jokes, photos, and more. ²⁶

Scratchers in this study were engaged in expressive activities, particularly digital media production, in both school and everyday life. An IJIMS participant mentioned, "I have been using Scratch [when I was not] in IJIMS. One particular time [I created Scratch projects] was just on my own . . . trying out what was on my mind." An interviewee's description revealed how his Scratch production is a way of self-expression:

Interviewee: It [working with Scratch] does help because that's one of those programs where you're not limited. You can do a lot of things. It's pretty much putting your emotions in a computer screen. And it kind of helps. It's kind of relieving in a way.

Interviewer: Can you explain the word "relieving"?

Interviewee: You can just put it out there, and you know that it's down there, so you can go back and look at it another time. So if you were feeling sad, you could go there, and you could just make a Scratch and just let it out.

Socializing

Youth have an intrinsic need for social and connected information behaviors. ²⁷ Traditional interpersonal information behaviors where youth seek and share information with peers, family members, teachers, and librarians in their local communities are still prevalent. Digital youth, however, are capable of expanding the boundaries of their interpersonal information behaviors by interacting with diverse people and forming communities of practice beyond geographical restrictions. ²⁸

By the time the interviews were conducted in 2010, Scratch did not provide many communication tools other than public forums and comments. Despite that, Scratchers from different parts of the world collaborated all the time. An interviewee discussed Scratch members' strong need for collaboration:

Well, the weird [thing] about people collaborating on Scratch is that except for remixing, there is really nothing that helps you collaborate. And, people just find their way of doing it. So, there are Scratch Companies you might have heard of. So, people form a group using a gallery. They usually all just use technologies that were not intended to be used as a collaborative platform. . . . [T]hat also makes collaboration on Scratch cool. People seem to be, they really want to do it and they don't just do it because it's there. They find their own way of collaborating. That's really cool.

All interviewees in Phase 2 were actively interacting with others during their problem-solving or knowledge-creation activities-that is, creation of an online magazine in IJIMS and development of Scratch Wiki and Scratch Resources. Scratch Wiki itself, in particular, is where youth collaboratively create knowledge about Scratch. The nature of Wiki-that is, being edited by anyone and having the ability to see previous versions-enhances the collaborative/collective aspect of Wiki as an information resource, as discussed by two participants:

As far as collaboration, what's really nice on the Wiki is that you can of course compare the text from the previous revisions, [which] I think is one of the helpful things about collaboration, which you can't always do, like, maybe you're in a collaboration and you remake a project. You can't really see directly what changed.

The good thing about the Wiki is that it can be edited by everyone. And, still always stores older versions. So, when someone does something wrong, they don't have to feel shy or whatever, you can just revert the edit.

During collaborative problem solving or creation activities, youth frequently exchange non-task-related comments or actions to build rapport and trust. Although they have never met in person, the individual interviewees mentioned that they make "lots of good friends in Scratch." Interviewees point out the many modern technologies that help them overcome the geographical distance and build relationships and trust one another:

There's stuff to help people talk online. It can help you make friendships and things, even without meeting, though it is kind of sad, like oh, you probably will never be able to meet this person.

On Scratch, there are the forums. And as you use them, you start to see people and sort of generally become friends with some of them. . . . If we share interest in something, then it helps. And the people that we were in with our collaboration group, they're friendly.

Another interviewee concurred that one could build relationships and trust online:

In the modern Internet, you know, here we use emoticons, you know, especially if you're a kid, you understand, you know, like texting-you understand how to use abbreviations and kind of how people act. And, for example, you end up-people will exaggerate things of course, you know, but it's all part of the process. Yeah. We also have to, like, when meeting new people, you know, we have to assume good faith. We never try to act-assume that they're trying to do something bad or assume that they were trying to do a certain thing. So that's kind of an important thing about being on the wiki.

Opportunities and Challenges

The findings show the ways in which digital youth have an increased sense of control over learning, creative, and social aspects of their life; as Dresang suggested earlier, Net Generation youth are increasingly in the driver's seat. ²⁹ Digital age information behavior offers a new type of learning opportunity, which supports both autonomous and social learning. Information seeking-especially in which youth can choose what to explore in what order in the digital environment-allows them self-taught and autonomous problem solving. Beyond seeking and use, engaging in productive and creative information behavior seems to provide digital age youth with an enhanced sense of empowerment. As information creators, digital youth have a growing chance to be powerful and express their creativity and identity. They also create information collaboratively and contribute to the development of collective knowledge. Moreover, youth feel a sense of agency during their social interactions, especially when their voices are accepted and they can make a meaningful contribution to the information world to which they belong. As demonstrated in the study, Radical Change theory provides a unique perspective to ferret out the potential of non-traditional behaviors to empower youth who are immersed in digital culture.

The theory, however, is not naive enough to overlook challenges in the digital environment. While most digital youth appreciate an increasing amount of information at their fingertips, processing a range of information demands a high level of thinking skills and information-credibility judgment. Today's youth must be equipped with digital information literacy skills in order to have a meaningful learning experience through information seeking. The creative information behavior of youth raises ethical issues concerning ownership as well as the problem of a digital participation gap, because advanced technologies that facilitate creation require a high cost. Collective knowledge can be challenged by quality concerns since anyone without traditional authority can contribute. Furthermore, constant connectivity and increasing online interaction bring up issues of privacy and online safety. The availability of diverse perspectives does not always lead to a broadening perspective or high tolerance when young people's social interaction is deliberately limited to a circle of like-minded people. Such challenges have implications for the future of Radical Change theory.

Future of the Theory

While the theory may not provide direct applications to all those challenges in the digital environment, Radical Change theory offers a valuable perspective for tackling the difficult issues for both professionals and scholars. The theory guides us to choose an approach to supporting a sense of agency in youth, instead of being intimidated by the dangers of the digital environment and attempting to protect "the innocence of youth" by limiting their access to information and technologies. I believe that the implications of the theory include the significant role of information professionals guiding and supporting digital youth in ways that do not stifle the digital age principles of connectivity, interactivity, and access. The principle of access can be seen as providing the foundation for Radical Change in both information resources and youth behaviors. Dresang explains that "an affirmative regard for Radical Change resources rests in part on a belief that the principles of intellectual freedom (based on the First Amendment) are applicable to youth as well as to adults." She further suggests that "the danger of withholding information from youth far exceeds the danger of providing it. The onus is on us, the adults who care for and work with young people, to guide them to it, give them the background to sort through it and interpret it, and write, edit, and publish it in books that give them the opportunity to reflect upon and absorb it." ³⁰ Fostering digital youth's twenty-first-century skills, such as digital information literacy, is key in order for them to truly take advantage of opportunities through the interactive and connected digital environment.

I offer the following diagram as a potential way that Radical Change theory can guide future research. It is a framework for studying the information behavior of digital youth, radical resources, and the outcomes for youth in obtaining twenty-first-century skills. Dresang recognized the framework to be "the next step in understanding digital age children's information behavior and the role of libraries in meeting their needs." ³¹ The diagram flows from the digital age principles-interactivity, connectivity, and access-to the Radical Change resources and behaviors that represent the principles. It depicts interaction between resources and people. Owing to its emphasis on the synergistic combination of users and information resources in the digital age, ³² researchers can benefit from the theory in investigating how digital age resources and changing users interact and influence one another. The theory can also be applied to exploring the effectiveness of Radical Change resources in promoting the twenty-first-century skills of digital youth, just as Pantaleo's findings proposed that Radical Change resources are tools to teach critical thinking skills, visual literacy, and more. ³³ Finally, the diagram calls for future research that explores how the interaction between changing resources and youth may have an impact on youth obtaining twenty-first-century skills, because these are critical skills in enhancing a sense of agency in youth by increasing their capacity to learn, create, and socialize.

Notes

1. Eliza T. Dresang, Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1999), 58.

2. Ibid., xxiv.

3. Eliza T. Dresang, "Digital Age Libraries and Youth: Learning Labs, Literacy Leaders, Radical Resources," in The Information Behavior of a New Generation : Children and Teens in the 21st Century, ed. Jamshid Beheshti and J. Andrew Large (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013), 93-116.

4. Eliza T. Dresang and Bowie Kotrla, "Radical Change Theory and Synergistic Reading for Digital Age Youth," Journal of Aesthetics Education 43 (2009): 94.

5. Dresang, Radical Change.

6. Eliza T. Dresang, "Radical Change Revisited: Dynamic Digital Age Books for Youth," Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education 8 (September 13, 2008), para 2, http://www.citejournal.org/vol8/iss3/seminal/article2.cfm.

7. Sylvia Pantaleo, Exploring Student Response to Contemporary Picturebooks (Toronto Italian Studies) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).

8. Dawnene D. Hassett, "Reading Hypertextually: Children's Literature and Comprehension Instruction," New Horizons for Learning, March 22, 2008, http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/literacy/hassett.htm; Dawnene D. Hammerberg, "Reading and Writing 'Hypertexually': Children's Literature, Technology, and Early Writing Instruction," Language Arts 78 (2001): 207-16.

9. Marta J. Abele, Responses to Radical Change Children's Books by Preservice Teachers (Capella University, 2003).

10. Eliza T. Dresang, "The Information-Seeking Behavior of Youth in the Digital Environment," Library Trends 54 (2005): 178-96; Eliza T. Dresang, "Radical Change," in Theories of Information Behavior, ed. Karen E. Fisher, Sanda Erdelez, and Lynne McKechnie (Medford, NJ: Information Today, 2005), 298-302; Eliza T. Dresang and Kyungwon Koh, "Radical Change Theory, Youth Information Behavior, and School Libraries," Library Trends 58, no. 1 (2009): 26-50.

11. Dresang, "The Information-Seeking Behavior of Youth in the Digital Environment."

12. Kyungwon Koh, "Theory-to-Research-to-Theory Strategy: A Research-Based Expansion of Radical Change Theory," Library & Information Science Research 64, no. 9 (2013): 1826-41, doi:10.1016/j.lisr.2012.09.003; Kyungwon Koh, "Adolescents' Information-Creating Behavior Embedded in Digital Media Practice Using Scratch," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 64, no. 9 (2013): 1826-41, doi:10.1002/asi.22878.

13. Hsiu Hsieh and Sarah E Shannon, "Three Approaches to Qualitative Content Analysis," Qualitative Health Research 15 (2005): 1277-88; Yan Zhang and Barbara M. Wildemuth, "Qualitative Analysis of Content," in Applications of Social Research Methods to Questions in Information and Library Science, ed. Barbara M. Wildemuth (Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2009), 308-19; Koh, "Theory-to-Research-to-Theory Strategy."

14. MIT Media Lab, "Scratch: Imagine, Program, Share," 2012, http://scratch.mit.edu/.

15. IJIMS, "Interactive Journalism Institute for Middle Schoolers," 2010, http://www.tcnj.edu/~ijims/.

16. Brenda Dervin and Rea Devakos, "Deep, Efficient, and Dialogic Study of Undergraduate Information Seeking and Use: A Methodological Exploration," 2010, http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/asist2010poster.pdf; Brenda Dervin, "Focus Groups for Participatory Research: Design Using Systematic Dialogic Principles Drawn from Sense-Making Methodology," 2007.

17. Koh, "Theory-to-Research-to-Theory Strategy"; Koh, "Adolescents' Information-Creating Behavior Embedded in Digital Media Practice Using Scratch."

18. Amanda Lenhart et al., "Social Media and Mobile Internet Use among Teens and Young Adults," 2010, 26-27, http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults/Summary-of-Findings.aspx.

19. Mizuko Ito et al., Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009).

20. Ibid., 273.

21. Koh, "Adolescents' Information-Creating Behavior Embedded in Digital Media Practice Using Scratch."

22. Ibid.

23. Rebekah Willett, "Consumer Citizens Online: Structure, Agency, and Gender in Online Participation," in Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, ed. David Buckingham (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 49-69.

24. Susannah Stern, "Producing Sites, Exploring Identities: Youth Online Authorship," in Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, ed. Buckingham, 95-118.

25. Ito et al., Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out.

26. Sandra Weber and Claudia Mitchell, "Imaging, Keyboarding, and Posting Identities: Young People and New Media Technologies," in Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, ed. Buckingham, 25-47.

27. Dresang, "The Information-Seeking Behavior of Youth in the Digital Environment," 20.

28. Cecilia R Aragon et al., "A Tale of Two Online Communities: Fostering Collaboration and Creativity in Scientists and Children," Proceedings of the Seventh ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition, 2009, 9-18.

29. Dresang, Radical Change.

30. Ibid., xv, xvi.

31. Dresang, "Digital Age Libraries and Youth: Learning Labs, Literacy Leaders, Radical Resources," 112.

32. Dresang and Kotrla, "Radical Change Theory and Synergistic Reading for Digital Age Youth."

33. Pantaleo, Exploring Student Response to Contemporary Picturebooks.

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Radical Change Theory: Framework for Empowering Digital Youth

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Kyungwon Koh, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma Koh, Kyungwon. " Radical Change Theory: Framework for Empowering Digital Youth." Journal of Research on Libraries & Young Adults 5 (2015): n. page. Web. . Eliza T. Dresang influenced numerous researchers and professionals by equipping them to understand and better serve digital youth.

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Information books adopted this theory because the use of hypertext and graphics are helpful to those who are struggling readers.

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Radical change, a theory described in my 1999 book, Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age, was developed in the mid-1990s. It serves as a lens through which to examine, explain, and ultimately, use contemporary literature for youth growing up in the Digital Age. It identifies changes in forms and formats, perspectives, and boundaries in this body of literature-all changes related to the interactivity, connectivity, and access of the Digital Age (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Key Definitions

Connectivity refers to connections of hypertext like links in resources, as well as the sense of community or construction of social worlds that emerge from changing perspectives and expanded associations in books and other resources or in relation to resources in the real world.

Interactivity refers to dynamic, nonlinear, nonsequential, complex books and other resources and associated learning and information behaviors.

Access refers to the breaking of longstanding information barriers, bringing entrée to a wide diversity of formerly largely inaccessible opinion and sophistication in books and other resources and related opportunities in society.

When I first conceived the Radical Change theory, almost everyone agreed that digital technologies were changing radically, yet almost no one acknowledged the concomitant change in a growing cadre of printed books for youth. Moreover, those who did take note of the changes in books saw little or no relationship between these alterations and the Digital Age in which they were written, illustrated, and published. Consequently, in discussions of the integration of technology in education, printed books were often either forgotten or treated as a completely different, unrelated entity.

As I prepared this reflection on my book, I realized that Radical Change was then and is still the only theory of which I am aware that makes this connection between printed books for youth and the digital environment.[a] Radical Change is what is known as a spatial/temporal theory, rooted in the belief that authors and illustrators are influenced by the time and place within which they write. Bakhtin noted that "for the purpose of his writing, an author must create entire worlds and, in doing so, is forced to make use of the organizing categories of the real world in which he lives" (Clarkand & Holquist, 1984, p. 278). Radical Change theory fits this tradition. It recognizes that temporal and spatial relationships in the digital world have "resulted in historically manifested narrative forms" (Holquist 1990, p. 113)-in this case interactivity, connectivity, and access in books for youth.

McLuhan (1964/1994) was prescient in describing and modeling how the influence of media (although not digital) could transform a book from a passive to an engaging medium. Landow (2006) was one of the first scholars to see how hypertext embodies Roland Barthes's conception of the "writerly" (more involving) rather than the "readerly" (less involving) text.

The Digital Age principles of interactivity, connectivity, and access that now characterize many books for youth are influenced by digital technologies and have altered the reading experience. Indicators of these principles in books include the following: graphics in new forms and formats; words and pictures reaching new levels of synergy; nonlinear or nonsequential organization and format; multiple layers of meaning from a variety of perspectives; cognitively, emotionally, and physically interactive formats; sophisticated presentations; abundant connections; and unresolved storylines. Manifestations of these and other indicators, however, have matured considerably in the ensuing decade and are continuing to appear in more and more sophisticated forms and formats, promoting more and more active engagement of the user/participant/reader, just as is happening with other dynamic media.

Two issues have been raised fairly often since the publication of Radical Change, so before continuing this reflection, I will address them. Radical Change theory identifies and describes those books with Digital Age characteristics, which have increased and continue to increase annually in number, variety, and sophistication, but which by no means constitute the majority of the 5,000 or so books published for youth each year. The fact that many books do not have these characteristics is one reason that a theory is useful to educators in locating those that do. In addition, although I make the case that these dynamic books hold a special appeal for Net Generation youth, I do not negate the value of more traditional reading experiences; nor do I deny that books with these features have existed prior to the Digital Age. A few authors were quite radical for their times (e.g., Lewis Carroll).

In the remainder of this reflection, I describe some of the more dramatic developments in books and look briefly to the future. Then I discuss the implications of these changes for teacher education and for curricular applications and student learning.
Digital Age Books as a Dynamic Medium
Information Books

More than a decade ago publisher DK, Inc. (now owned by Pearson), was a stand-out innovator in information books for youth. Their books reflected the nonlinear, nonsequential characteristics of digital media. They adopted design characteristics of digital hypertext, presenting pictures and text in juxtaposition that required, or at least promoted, a hypertextual approach to thinking and reading. Peter Kindersley, company founder, set out to demonstrate that visual information is as important as verbal, especially for readers with dyslexia (which Kindersley had encountered in his youth). In the early 1990s, DK books (along with the Cole/Degan Magic School Bus series) were the rare digitally designed information books. Now, this style of organization has become so common place in information books for youth that it is hard to find books that have not adopted it.

Fiction for Older Youth

Virginia Euwer Wolff is an author of fiction whose work clearly changed with the development of the Digital Age. She created her first two books for young adults in the late 1980s in a traditional linear style. However, soon she turned to more radical writing. The first two novels in a planned trilogy, Make Lemonade (1993) and True Believer (2001) were written in the now increasingly common form of free or blank verse. Wolff arranged the words on the page to reflect the emotions and cadence of the teen protagonist.

Other novelists have taken this a step further and arranged the words in their books to form pictures on the page. For example, Hesse (1997) in Out of the Dust arranged words like piano keys during a particularly dramatic event involving piano playing. Numerous poets for youth regularly create words that form pictures (see, e.g., James Stevenson's works).

In 1998 Wolff in Bat 6 pioneered the style of writing with multiple voices and multiple perspectives (22 to be precise). Her technique has since been widely adopted. Other Digital Age forms and formats that have become prevalent include text that is formatted to appear as letters, journal entries, diaries, emails, or instant messages. The Internet is not the only medium where young readers can access multiple presentations, multiple perspectives, and multiple layers of reading choices.

Picture Books for All Ages

Picture books for all ages have incorporated many of the Digital Age changes. In Radical Change, I identified Macaulay's (1990) Black and White as a prototype of this genre. Since then, picture books have incorporated dozens of digitally designed variations, although perhaps none with the timeless sophistication and complexity of Black and White. Varying font size and shapes are exceedingly commonplace - the size of the font along with color may be used to convey emotions, importance, and direction. Often, a remarkable synergy is created between words and pictures. Visual perspectives from numerous points of view (in the past children's books used only midrange perspectives) take the young reader on journeys reminiscent of the movement within video games. Characters exit the story and speak to the reader. Some take control of writing the story (e.g., a cat named Chester in Watt, 2007).

Paper-Engineered Books

Many pop-up books requiring physical interaction are more accurately called "paper engineered" because of the immense artistic talent involved and the complexity of their design. I expressed ambivalence in Radical Change about whether pop-ups were merely toys or serious books influenced by the digital environment. That ambivalence disappeared in the past decade - the literary value of paper-engineered texts goes far beyond toy status.

Sendak, Yorink, and Reinhart's (2006) expertly paper-engineered picturebook, Mommy?, is a 21st century version of Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (1963). Both tell the story of a small child's quest for approval from his mother or for his mother's love. Through engaging with the complex manipulatives, the young reader is actively involved in the protagonist's search. Of course the premise in the Sendak et al. book, mommy as monster, is also a much more sophisticated and ambivalent presentation of the subject content, with an ending left to the imagination of the reader.

Graphic Novels

I find that no change has been more dramatic than that of the graphic novel. McCloud (1993) demonstrated that comics, as a serious medium, demand complex, cognitive, interactive attention from the reader, who must create the part of the story/text that falls in the gutter between panels. My discussion of graphic novels occupied less than two full pages of text in Radical Change, even though they had been around in young adult literature as a serious format for a while. If written today, my discussion of this format would comprise at least one entire chapter, for with the interactivity and graphic dominance of much digital media, this print format has mushroomed. Graphic novels have become a form of print book that appears in all genres of literature for youth, from the Baby Mouse books by Jennifer and Matthew Holm to serious historical nonfiction and multilayered fictional work. Often traditional printed books become movies and video games and vice versa. Now novels are sometimes retold in another print format, the graphic novel-a sign of the format's popularity.

The Dynamic Hybrid Book

One last dramatic Digital Age change in relation to books has occurred since the publication of Radical Change. It is a recent development, not yet widespread, although Kathleen Burnett and I forecasted it in 1999, based on the work of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. For want of a better term, I am referring to it as a dynamic hybrid book. One of the first such hybrid examples I noticed was Cathy's Book (Stewart & Weusnabm, 2006). Phone numbers and Web site addresses are sprinkled throughout the text and must be accessed in order to solve the mystery of a missing boyfriend posed in the book.

A much more grandiose venture is referred to as a multiplatform book by its publisher, Scholastic, Inc.. The book includes trading cards (except in the library edition) that turn into game pieces when a code found on each is entered on a Web site. The next step is participation in an online game that extends over the course of 10 books and will result in the awarding of $100,000 in prizes to a selection of young readers who solve the mystery described in the books. The first book in the series, A Maze of Bones, was issued in September 2008. To fully experience this dynamic book one must move back and forth between digital and print media. Players are also assigned to a team, so it is easy to imagine a huge connected worldwide scramble to read the books and move to the next step of the mystery. The interactivity, connectivity, and access of the digital environment explain why this type of hybrid reading activity will likely succeed. This type of synergy that is growing up between printed books and digital media is another reason that the Digital Age book is a part of technology integration in classroom instruction.

Radical Change Theory and the Future

Radical Change Theory will continue to be useful in predicting the changes in books for youth. Interactivity, connectivity, and access will continue to be the principal driving forces in the digital environment that explain innovations in reading and information resources for youth. The question must be raised, however, as technology advances, whether the content of the book will gradually morph into residence on a handheld digital media device. In Radical Change, I pondered the answer to "why handheld [printed] books?" In my original response, I named the opportunity for a depth of examination of and reflection on ideas, the portability and availability of books, and the careful editing and review process that precedes development of a literary piece for youth. I do not see how any of these characteristics are precluded by the latest versions of portable electronic book readers. The latest versions are far too expensive for general consumption, but assuming they were not, they allow for the reflection, portability, availability (download via Bluetooth), and same careful preview and review process. Electronic paper is close to perfection. The aesthetics of holding a cloth bound book are missing, but a simulation of the experience is getting close.

Already a large number of books for youth are available in e-book format. Many of them require specific handheld readers that will not work with other publishers' books. There are generic readers, but they are still quite expensive and not many digital books for youth are currently available in a compatible format. Of course, there are many multipurpose digital devices such as Palms and smart phones that will accommodate books - there are just not a lot of books for youth available for them yet either. I do believe we are on the verge of a breakthrough with the format.

Certain print book aesthetics would be difficult (but perhaps not possible) to emulate in e-book format. The 2008 Caldecott Award for the most outstanding picture book for children published in the United States was presented to Brian Selznick (2007), author and illustrator of a radical book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. It is hundreds of pages longer than an ordinary picture book. Approximately 300 of its 533 pages are wordless black and white sketches that tell the story, not illustrating the text but replacing it. Selznick noted that he thinks of the book as somewhere between a graphic novel, a picture book, and a film (All About Adolescent Literacy, 2007). Each sequence of drawings can itself become a miniature silent movie if the reader employs a flipbook technique. This latter feature that requires a physical interaction with the book would not be the same in digital form, nor would paper-engineered books or picture books of various shapes and sizes be the same on a handheld digital device.

The International Children's Digital Library (ICDL; see http://www.icdlbooks.org/index.shtml) , however, has successfully retained the original artwork and format of highly visual children's books, which can be read in one of five free online viewers. The ICDL did not exist when Radical Change was published but it will continue to expand in the future, because it is more successful online than on a portable device. As of 2008 this Web site, created by faculty and child consultants at the University of Maryland and sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, Microsoft Foundation, Adobe Systems, Inc., and numerous book publishers, had 2,657 books in 48 languages and had been visited by more than a million people in 166 countries. Are these print books? They are originally print books that have been scanned in with sophisticated digital equipment. This type of digital library will continue to coexist with highly visual books in a format that is independent of a computer for both practice and psychological reasons, but the ICDL enormously increases accessibility to books in many countries and cultures that no U.S. library could possibly afford.

It is likely that-as much of the information formerly provided in books is now mostly in digital form- formats that can be easily transported will be (when economically feasible) and that those that cannot be will remain in print form. This would not discount the usefulness of Radical Change theory in the least, nor the existence of printed books, nor of physical space libraries.

Cross-Disciplinary Implications of Radical Change Research

Radical Change theory was devised to explain books for youth and then expanded to explain youth behavior in relation to digitally designed books and other digital media. The research conducted with Radical Change during the past decade has focused specifically on Digital Age books and related reading behaviors, which, not rooted in any one discipline, has cross-disciplinary implications and cross-media relevance.

Teacher Education

Although almost all teachers now receive some kind of instruction in how to integrate technology into their classroom teaching, few teachers are taught to think of Digital Age characteristics of books that would make good partners with technology. Abele (2003), at Capella University, did a dissertation study titled Responses to Radical Change Children's Books by Preservice Teachers. Her findings were as follows:

The reading attitudes of the preservice teachers were affected positively by the [Radical Change] books, and more time was spent reading for enjoyment. The participants also described a higher level of interaction required by the reader than with more traditional children's books. This interaction was welcomed by the participants and valued as an effective part of future teaching. The results of this study also revealed that reading is a social experience, best shared with others for more pleasurable involvement (Abele, 2003, Abstract)

The results of this research would suggest that preservice teachers can make the link between Digital Age books and the types of experiences that attract students to computers and other technologies and that this link could extend the preservice teachers' ability to connect with Net Generation learners and make their learning more relevant to their lives. New teachers could enter the classroom armed with an additional digital tool. Because Radical Change is a cross-disciplinary theory and because it can be used to identify books in any discipline (200 of them were annotated in Appendix A of Radical Change), its inclusion in technology-related teacher education courses and in reading-related preservice courses, could be beneficial in science, mathemathics, social studies, English, and the humanities.

Cross-Disciplinary Classroom Instruction

The bottom line of the research in this area is that, given a choice, many children will select the books that emulate their preferences in dynamic media and that, despite its less linear and often more sophisticated presentation, they can and do comprehend what is presented. Establishing that children can and do comprehend nonlinear, nonsequential text has been important, as most of the teaching of reading and writing to date has been so firmly linear.

The traditional way of teaching reading has been strictly linear (unless one counts the back and forth children do searching pictures for clues of what the words might mean). Hassett (formerly Hammerberg, 2001), who investigated the reading and writing of early elementary school age children, concluded that, in fact, their natural way of approaching both functions is "hypertextually." After studying texts identified by Radical Change she proposed something she termed "shared and interactive writing" that builds upon children's natural inclinations. Her work suggests that even very young children possess the same affinity for nonlinear design in their books that has been noted in the digital media.

Another researcher, Pantaleo, has firmly established both the affinity and the ability of young children to read, comprehend, and enjoy digitally designed and quite sophisticated print books. Between 2003 and 2008, Pantaleo published 24 articles describing research with elementary school children in first to fifth grades that focused on Digital Age books and their influence on reading and writing, a number of which incorporated Radical Change theory. (See her Web site for a list of these articles: http://www.educ.uvic.ca/Faculty/pantaleo/writing.htm.) All of her research is qualitative, with analysis of both oral transcripts and written responses from the children who participated in a number of different classrooms and schools. Conclusions from four of her studies having cross-disciplinary implications and cross-media relevance can be found in the appendix.

Pantaleo's conclusions are rich in instructional opportunities that stimulate thinking and learning across disciplines and across media. Her work shows that writing often emulates reading. So the study of literary hypertextual writing in books might have a crossover to the plethora of writing online.

One relatively subversive thought is that in schools, where some of the new media most favored by youth are not allowed, the excitement of Radical Change books with Digital Age features might serve as an alternative lure for young learners, or at least they might decrease the disconnect between their outside-of-school and in-school life that exists for many youth.

In her research studies, Pantaleo discussed another Radical Change assumption, that adults and youth are partners in the digital world. Her description of the role of the teacher is one of partner with the children in constructing meaning. She mentioned in one study that when reading the transcript of one of her own classroom discussions she realized she had missed some salient opportunities to foster children's thoughts by talking too much herself.

Two final words on classroom instruction: The same principles of technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge that apply to the use of technology in the classroom should apply to the technology-influenced books, when the books are used to capitalize on their Digital Age characteristics. Finally, Appendix D in Radical Change, "Using Radical Change with Readers" offered some ways to help students recognize and work with Radical Change characteristics in books.

The Synergy of Digital and Print Media

According to Jenkins (2006), we live in a convergence culture, and among the convergences are the old media and the new. In some instances this convergence can reap benefits for all involved. Earlier in this reflection was the example of a convergence of print and Internet use necessary to solve a mystery strung out over 10 books, all by well-known authors for youth, making it more than a game. Another example, mentioned in Radical Change is the online role-playing MOOs (Multi-Object Oriented) and MUSHs (Multiuser Shared Habitats) based on Anne McCaffrey's novels plus various other connected Web sites. (For The Worlds of Anne McCaffrey approved fan web sites see http://annemccaffrey.net/index.php?page_id=21.)

The principles upon which Radical Change is based well explain how this offline/online synergy has grown and developed. The Harry Potter books (the best selling series of print books in the history of children's publishing) precipitated the largest online literary community in Internet history, a community of intense book discussion, role playing, and creative writing. Jenkins (2006) documented this drama in his chapter, "Why Heather Can Write?" (pp. 169-205). The literary communities (noted by Pantaleo as encouraged in a classroom by sharing and discussion of Radical Change books) became a worldwide social network stemming from a print medium. Radical Change predicts even more synergy of media as the Digital Age principles mature. This type of synergy created by shared interactivity, connectivity, and access between the print and digital environments makes all types of media involved dynamic.

Note

[a] Another theoretical explanation for some of the changes identified by Radical Change and applied to books for youth is postmodernism. For a discussion of the similarities and differences between the two, see Dresang (2008).

References

Abele, M. (2003). Responses to Radical Change children's books by preservice teachers (Doctoral dissertation, Capella University, 2003). Retrieved from ProQuest Digital Dissertations. (AAT 3093818)

Burnett, K., & Dresang, E. T. (1999). Rhizomorphic reading: The emergence of a new aesthetic in literature for youth. The Library Quarterly, 69(4), 421-446.

Carr, N. (2008, July/August). "Is Google making us stupid?" Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

Clarkand, K., & Holquist, M. (1984). Mikhail Bakhtin. Cambridge: Harvard University.

Dresang, E. T. (1999). Radical change: Books for youth in a Digital Age. New York: Wilson.

Dresang, E.T. (2008). Radical Change theory, Postmodernism, and contemporary picturebooks. In L.R. Sipe & S. Pantaleo (Eds.), Postmodern picturebooks: Play, parody, and self-referentiality (pp. 41-54). New York: Routledge.

Foehr, U.B. (2006). Media multitasking among American youth: Prevalence, predictors and pairings. Retrieved from the Kaiser Family Foundation Web site: http://www.kff.org/entmedia/7592.cfm

Hesse, K. (1997). Out of the dust. New York: Scholastic.

Holquist, M. (1990). Dialogism: Bakhtin and his world, New York: Routledge.

Landow, G.P. (2006). Hypertext 3.0: Critical theory and new media in an era of globalization. (3rd ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.

Lenhart, A., Madden, M., Macgill, A.R., & Smith A. (2007). Teens and social media: The use of social media gains a greater foothold in teen life as they embrace the conversational nature of interactive online media. Retrieved from the Pew Internet & American Life Web site: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/230/report_display.asp

Macaulay, D. (1990). Black and white. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

McCloud, S. (1993). Understanding comics: The invisible art. Northampton, MA: Tundra.

McLuhan, M. (1994). Understanding media: The extensions of man. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Original work published in 1964).

Pantaleo, S. (2004, October). Young children and Radical Change characteristics in picture books. Reading Teacher, 58, 178-187.

Pantaleo, S. (2005, February). Young children engage with the metafictive in picture books. Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, 28, 19-37.

Pantaleo, S. (2007a, June). Interthinking: Young children using language to think collectively during interactive read-alouds. Early Childhood Education, 34, 439-447.

Pantaleo, S. (2007b, April) Writing texts with Radical Change characteristics. Literacy, 41, 16-25.

Prensky, M. (2001). Do they really think differently?: Digital natives, Digital immigrants, part II. On the Horizon, 9(6), 1-9. Retrieved on August 6, 2008, from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part2.pdf

Rideout, V, Roberts, D.F., & Foehr, U.B. (2005). Executive summary: Generation M: Media in the lives of 8-18 year olds. Retrieved from theKaiser Family Foundation Web site: http://www.kff.org/entmedia/7250.cfm

Sendak, M, Yorinks, A., & Reinhart, M.(2006). Mommy? New York: Michael di Capua Books/Scholastic.

Selznick, B. (2007). The invention of Hugo Cabret. New York: Scholastic Press.

Stewart S., & Weusnabm H. (2006). Cathy's book: If found call 650-266-8233. Jackson, TN: Running Press.

Watt, M. (2007). Chester. Tonawanda, NY: Kids Can Press.

Wolf, M. (2007). Proust and the squid: The story and science of the reading brain. New York: HarperCollins.

Wolff, V. E. (1993). Make lemonade. New York: Holt.

Wolff, V. E. (1998). Bat 6. New York: Scholastic.

Wolff, V. E. (2001). True believer. New York: Atheneum.

Author Note:

Eliza T. Dresang
Eliza Atkins Gleason Professor
Founding Director, Interdisciplinary Center for Leadership, Technology Integration, and Critical Literacies (I-CELTIC)
College of Information
Florida State University
edresang@fsu.edu

Appendix

A Summary of Pantaleo's Research Conclusions

Reading:

Young readers thoroughly enjoyed the books with Digital Age characteristics (Pantaleo, 2004; Pantaleo, 2007a).

Readers make choices as they read and, as is evident in the transcript excerpts, transact with the verbal and visual texts in various nonsequential ways (Pantaleo, 2004; Pantaleo, 2005).

Although readers should always be actively involved in the construction of meaning while reading, Radical Change identified texts require a greater degree of reader participation in the creation of meaning (Pantaleo, 2004; Pantaleo, 2005; Pantaleo, 2007a).

Marked similarities exist between the children's interactions during Radical Change identified books read-aloud sessions and characteristics of what web-based interactions offer, e.g., nonlinear, nonsequential strategies; interactivity with blurring between reader and writer (Pantaleo, 2005).

Connectivity refers to the increased sense of community created by these books, because the forms and formats encourage sharing among readers (Pantaleo, 2004; Pantaleo, 2007a).

Radical Change characteristics give agency to readers (Pantaleo, 2004).

The children's literary understanding about the ways that stories "work" was extended [Comment: Reminiscent of Papert's (2005) admonition that computers can be used to teach children to think about thinking] (Pantaleo, 2004; Pantaleo, 2005).

"Students are immersed in a plurality of texts and educators need to acknowledge and use students' out-of-school experiences with texts that have multiple reading, writing and viewing pathways" (Pantaleo, 2007b, p. 25).

Writing:

Children are socialized into a certain (linear) way to write, but when exposed to other possibilities their own creative products reflect breaking the mold (Pantaleo, 2006; Pantaleo, 2007b).

Writing after exposure to Radical Change texts showed skillful interruptions and disruptions in each narrative (Pantaleo, 2007a).

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Radical Change Revisited: Dynamic Digital Age Books for Youth

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Radical change, a theory described in my 1999 book, Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age, was developed in the mid-1990s. It serves as a lens through which to examine, explain, and ultimately, use contemporary literature for youth growing up in the Digital Age.

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The future of the radical change theory will be that it can help youth, "increase their capacity to learn, create, and socialize."

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The Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults

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Kyungwon Koh, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma

Koh, Kyungwon. " Radical Change Theory: Framework for Empowering Digital Youth." Journal of Research on Libraries & Young Adults 5 (2015): n. page. Web. <Date accessed>.

Abstract

Eliza T. Dresang influenced numerous researchers and professionals by equipping them to understand and better serve digital youth. This paper revisits her theory of Radical Change, which explains the synergistic combination of changing resources and youth in the digital age. The presented research applies and extends the theory by investigating the information behavior of digital youth. The study has two phases -Phase 1: content analysis of research literature; Phase 2: group and individual interviews with young adults who are members of an online community called Scratch. Selected findings illustrate the ways in which digital youth have an increased sense of control over learning, creative, and social aspects of their life. The study demonstrates that Radical Change theory provides a unique perspective to ferret out the potential of non-traditional information behaviors. The theory continues to be a tool for enhancing a sense of agency for digital youth by increasing their capacity to learn, create, and socialize. Future research applying the theory could explore how the dynamic interactions between changing resources and youth may have an impact on youth obtaining twenty-first-century skills.

Introduction

Eliza T. Dresang was best known for her theory of Radical Change, which explains changes in information resources and human information behavior in the current digital age. Her theory and research have influenced numerous researchers and professionals as they seek to understand digital youth. In this paper, the term "digital youth" refers to contemporary children and young adults (ages birth through eighteen years) who were born into this interactive and connected digital culture, regardless of their varying levels of access to technologies or digital media skills. In order to honor and remember Eliza T. Dresang, this paper attempts to answer the following questions:

Q1. What is the theory of Radical Change?

Q2. How does the theory help us understand the information behavior of digital youth? That is, what radical changes do contemporary youth experience when they interact with information?

Q3. What does the future of the theory look like?

To answer these questions, I begin with a review of Radical Change theory and research that has applied this theory. I will then present selected findings from my dissertation research, which was conducted with the guidance of Eliza T. Dresang. I had the privilege of working with her directly and take up her pioneering work of Radical Change by applying, testing, and extending the theory. The findings demonstrate the value of the theory in explaining the information behavior of digital youth. This paper concludes with a look toward the future of the theory.

The emphasis of this paper is on the theory's perspective on youth empowerment, as Dresang had always strived for empowering youth through her scholarly, professional, and personal achievements. The theory of Radical Change is fundamentally grounded in her belief in "the child-as-capable-and-seeking-connection." ¹ This paper proposes the future of the theory as a tool for enhancing a sense of agency of digital youth.

Radical Change Theory

Radical Change theory suggests that many of the changes in information resources and human behavior in this digital age can be explained through these core concepts: connectivity, interactivity, and access. While the theory is currently being used to investigate both resources and behavior, it was originally developed to explain changes in youth literature. The theory's explanatory power to study human behavior was revealed later by research studies that applied the theory across disciplines, such as library and information studies, education, and English.

Initial Development: Youth Literature with Digital Characteristics

Radical Change theory was initially developed in the mid-1990s to explain changes in youth literature in the digital age, in which society became increasingly more interactive and connected through digital networks. Serving as a lens through which to examine, explain, and use contemporary literature for youth growing up in the digital age, the theory was developed based on the following four assumptions, which support children's sense of agency:

Children are capable and are seeking connections.

The digital environment nurtures children's capabilities.

Handheld books offer digital-age connections.

Adults and youth are partners in the digital world.²

Dresang explained that these assumptions are an optimistic view of youth, not universally held in the 1990s or even currently; nonetheless, it is a perspective that many youth services librarians have embraced in order to create participatory partnerships with youth. ³

The core concepts of Radical Change theory, referred to as digital age principles, capture key characteristics of the digital society and include the following:

Connectivity: A sense of community or construction of social worlds that emerge from changing perspectives and expanded associations in the real world or in literature.

Interactivity: Dynamic, user-initiated, non-linear, non-sequential, complex cognitive, emotional, and physical behaviors and relationships with and among components of literature.

Access: Breaking of long-standing information barriers, bringing entrée to a wide diversity of formerly largely inaccessible opinion and opportunity in society and sophistication in literature.⁴

Radical Change theory contends that an increasing percentage of contemporary literature for youth reflects characteristics of the digital age principles and that these Radical Change books may appeal to youth growing up in the digital age. For example, indicators for Radical Change books include words and pictures reaching new levels of synergy, non-linear organization and format, multiple layers of meaning, youth who speak for themselves, subjects previously forbidden, unsolved endings, and more. ⁵

The initial development of Radical Change theory made groundbreaking connections between printed books and digital culture, which initially seemed to be competing and incompatible. Dresang writes:

When I first conceived the Radical Change theory, almost everyone agreed that digital technologies were changing radically, yet almost no one acknowledged that concomitant change in a growing cadre of printed books for youth. Moreover, those who did take note of the changes in books saw little or no relationship between these alterations and the Digital Age in which they were written, illustrated, and published. Consequently, in discussions of the integration of technology in education, printed books were often either forgotten or treated as a completely different, unrelated entity. ⁶

Radical Change is still the only widely used theory that makes this connection between printed literature for youth and the digital environment.

Theory Application and Expansion

Research studies applying the theory posited that its applicability is not limited to literature for youth. These studies applied the theory to different types of information resources beyond books. Further, studies used the theory to observe human behavior in response to the information resources that reflect the concepts of connectivity, interactivity, and access. For example, Sylvia Pantaleo explored children's understandings of and responses to diverse resources-such as books, visual art materials, films, games, and the Internet-using Radical Change theory. Her research found that children are capable of reading, comprehending, and enjoying non-traditional information resources with Radical Change characteristics. Pantaleo further suggested that these Radical Change resources can be used to teach critical thinking skills, visual literacy skills, and interpretive strategies, in addition to providing pleasurable aesthetic reading experiences for digital youth. ⁷

Dawnene D. Hasset (formerly Hammerberg) applied Radical Change theory to observe how elementary school children read and write. The theory was used to investigate how early elementary reading comprehension and writing instructions could be updated to reflect the characteristics of contemporary reading materials. She found a disconnect between the ways in which children are taught to read and write at school and the materials they are currently reading. Hasset's study suggested new technologies that promote interactive, non-linear, and hypertextual forms of communication and that call for new ways of reading and comprehending. ⁸

Radical Change theory was also used to study reading behaviors of adults. Marta J. Abele observed pre-service teachers' responses to children's books with Radical Change characteristics. The pre-service teachers not only recognized differences between Radical Change books and more traditional children's books, but also positively responded to the books with digital characteristics. Abele reported that Radical Change books require a higher level of interaction for readers and that the books would make good partners with technology in classroom teaching to attract digital youth. ⁹ These research studies from different disciplines reveal the theory's applicability to human behavior in general.

The versatility of the theory's potential applications was suggested to explain a range of contemporary information behaviors. ¹⁰ Dresang demonstrated how the theory provides a new perspective to explain the information behavior of youth in the digital environment by reexamining existing studies on the topic. She found that many of the studies tend to focus largely on the deficiencies and the need for improvement instead of recognizing the potential of new and non-traditional behaviors in this digital age. She suggested that "to view youth information-seeking behavior as generally lacking is to overlook the new behaviors nurtured and facilitated by the digital environment and to miss the golden nuggets embedded in these studies." ¹¹ The study presented in this paper attempts to report some of the "golden nuggets" using the theory's unique perspective that empowers youth. The theory argues that behaviors that were previously interpreted as a lack of skills or failure might be understood as new types of thinking and learning, which reflect properties of the digital society.

Methodology

The presented study tested and expanded Radical Change theory to investigate the information behavior of digital youth. The theory was applied throughout the entire inquiry process; it spurred the research questions of the study, provided a framework for facilitating systematic data analysis, and offered an insight to interpret digital age information behavior. ¹² The research questions included the following:

What are the key characteristics of information behavior of youth in the digital age?

1.1. How do youth act independently?

1.2. How do youth form identity and perceive others?

1.3. How do youth interact socially with others?

How can Radical Change Theory be applied and further developed to explain youth information behavior in the digital age?

The study consisted of two sequential and qualitative phases-Phase 1: content analysis of research literature; Phase 2: group and individual interviews with youth. Phase 1 of the study involved conducting content analysis of literature to identify the behaviors of contemporary youth that represent Radical Change core concepts of connectivity, interactivity, and access, as well as behaviors that do not represent these concepts. This approach to literature analysis was selected in order to cover diverse contexts, such as different age groups, tasks, and both school and everyday life settings building upon previous research efforts. The literature selected adhered to the following criteria: (1) research-based, (2) topics that address information-related activities across the disciplines, and (3) subjects born between 1992 and 2005, that is, youth ages 5-18 in 2010, the year when data was collected. An effort was made to separate the research evidence from unsubstantiated anecdotes and rhetoric. The collected literature was analyzed using a Directed Qualitative Content Analysis approach; the theory provided an initial coding framework while the researcher still immersed herself in the data to allow new themes to emerge inductively. That way the findings captured all patterns of behavior that both align and refute the theory. ¹³

Phase 1 findings were tested in Phase 2 with a purposeful sample of youth, ages 12-15, who actively engage in digital media practices using Scratch. Scratch is a graphical programming language, also referred to as an online community for Scratch users, developed for youth to create various digital projects-such as interactive stories, games, simulations, magazines, animations, music, and art-and to share these creations on the Web. ¹⁴ Scratch was identified to be an exemplary place to investigate Radical Change information behavior of youth, because Scratch members formed a vibrant community to create various user-initiated projects using a highly interactive programming tool. Different from a traditional text-based programming language, Scratch takes the building-block approach: users create programming scripts simply by dragging and dropping colorful building blocks that indicate different commands. Scratch also makes it easy for youth to import, combine, and create sound, image, and video within the program. It has been used in schools, universities, libraries, and everyday life to promote young people's twenty-first-century learning skills, such as computational skills, collaboration skills, and information and media literacies. Youth who are active members of Scratch were recognized as likely to be capable of providing deep and detailed descriptions of the topic, since they are heavily immersed in digital culture and engaged in active information behavior embedded in digital media creation practices.

The researcher identified three of the most information-intensive projects in the Scratch community: the Interactive Journalism Institute for Middle Schoolers (IJIMS), Scratch Wiki, and Scratch Resources. The goals of IJIMS included developing middle school students' interests in twenty-first-century writing, media, math, and computing skills through interactive journalism and digital storytelling. ¹⁵ The IJIMS students created an online magazine using Scratch and other digital media in a collaborative setting. They conducted interviews with members of the community, wrote articles, and worked as a group to create an interactive magazine with assistance from teachers and undergraduate mentors. Young Scratch members voluntarily initiated and maintained Scratch Wiki and Scratch Resources. Scratch Wiki is an information website where Scratch members share information on various aspects of Scratch. Scratch Resources is a digital media library developed to share tutorials, characters, and sounds, which is also contributed to by members of the Scratch community and can be used for Scratch projects.

Eight IJIMS students and four developers of Scratch Wiki and Scratch Resources were recruited for group and individual interviews, which were informed by Brenda Dervin's Sense-Making Methodology. ¹⁶ All IJIMS students were eighth-graders and included four girls and four boys from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. The four boys, ages 12-15, who developed Scratch Wiki and Scratch Resources participated in the interviews online, because they lived in different parts of the world, including Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United States; they are all fluent in English. Data analysis applied the directed qualitative content analysis technique. ¹⁷

Findings: Youth Empowerment through Learning, Creating, and Socializing

The study findings identified the patterns of information behavior that represent the concepts of Radical Change theory: connectivity, interactivity, and access (see table 1). The findings suggest a holistic perspective for observing youth information behavior as interplay between various factors, such as young people's (a) intrapersonal processes, (b) identity formation and value negotiation, and (c) social interactions. The findings propose that digital youth engage in non-linear and interactive information seeking, use, and creation activities with an increasing sense of ownership; they form identities and negotiate value systems while they interact with a range of information from different, often conflicting, information sources; and they expand the boundaries of interpersonal information behavior by connecting to diverse resources, people, and communities to meet their information needs.

Table 1. Types and Characteristics of Digital Youth Information Behavior ¹⁸

Type One: Intrapersonal Process

Personalizing

The design of one's own information environment to facilitate access to and use of information concerning personal interests.

Interactive seeking

Dynamic, fortuitous, and self-controlled information seeking behaviors.

Squirreling

The way youth extensively gather and keep information in the digital environment in the form of downloading.

Remixing

The creative reuse of information in order to produce new information or expressive materials.

Tinkering

Interactive mode of information production, which starts as an idea and the idea evolves by continual modification, trials and errors, and experimentation.

Visualizing

Affinity for visual and graphic display of information and synergistic integration of the use of text, image, and multimedia in their information behavior

Type Two: Identity and Perspectives

Self-expression

The ways youth express themselves by producing and publishing information that reflect their identity and perspectives to the connected information world.

Seeking Identity-related Information

Information seeking regarding identity issues such as gender, race, and sexuality.

Negotiating Value Systems

The ways youth process diverse perspectives and deal with ambiguity when interacting with various information, people, and communities.

Sense of Empowerment

A greater ownership and a sense of agency over information activities as a result of new and innovative behaviors and the nature of the information environment in the digital age.

Type Three: Social Interactions

Networking

The act of reaching and connecting resources, people, and communities to meet one's information needs through technological networks, such as the Internet or mobile networks.

Access to Collective Knowledge

The ways youth access and contribute to the aggregated information that is developed by individuals, especially on the Web

Collaborative Problem Solving

Information behavior performed by two or more people working together in order to complete tasks or develop new information.

Socio-emotional support

The ways youth exchange non-work related comments or actions to build rapport and trust during collaborative/collective information behavior.

This section presents selected findings from the study. These are characteristics that clearly represent the concepts of Radical Change theory when digital youth learn, create, and socialize. Interpreted through a lens of Radical Change theory, these behaviors have the potential to enhance a sense of agency in youth. Substantiated examples are from both Phase 1 (research literature analysis) and Phase 2 (interviews with Scratchers) findings.

Information Seeking. Youth in this study showed a greater ownership over their own learning in the digital environment through information seeking. Findings suggested that information seeking is a way of learning or acting that makes young people's learning more meaningful. The fact that contemporary youth have access to a range of information at their fingertips seemed to increase their confidence in learning new things, including knowledge and skills they have not been taught in school or from adults. A boy who is a Scratch Wiki administrator said that he learned the skills and knowledge needed to develop Scratch Wiki by looking around online: "It was mostly just by looking around the Internet, you know, whether from [the] Scratch website-people post various stuff there-or looking at tutorials at other wikis." The founder of Scratch Resources mentioned that the development of the online media library "was possible just because there were a lot of useful sites out there," especially since he had not taken an IT (information technology) lesson in school or elsewhere.

Contemporary youth can also look up information on sensitive topics that they are reluctant to ask other people to learn about, because nowadays they have access to information that was previously unavailable or difficult to access. Amanda Lenhart et al. reported that teens "use the internet to look for information on health topics that are hard to talk about, like drug use, sexual health or depression. A bit more than one in six (17%) internet-using teens look online for information about sensitive health topics. . . . [Teens] were more likely to look online for answers to health questions that were hard to ask of others." ¹⁸

Collective Knowledge. Digital youth have access to collective knowledge-that is, the aggregated information contributed by individuals-especially on the Web such as Wikipedia, online forums, and expert communities. It allows them to pursue in-depth knowledge on specialized topics in their interest area. While some youth with specialized interests can become discouraged due to the lack of local resources, the increasing availability of search engines, online forums, and networked publics permits them to access online resources for an initial introduction to a particular area. ¹⁹ Interviewees in Mizuko Ito et al.'s study accessed and shared information about their interests by participating in online communities. A teenage member of a fan sub community (a fan community to translate and create subtitles for foreign films or TV shows) described "how initially he was attracted to the specialty because of the depth of knowledge that he could pursue within an expert community. 'It just got interesting because other encoders were like, "here are some tips and tricks." . . . There were so many tricks in how to handle that stuff that it got pretty interesting.'" ²⁰

My interviews with youth concurred that digital youth seek out and create information on their areas of interest through an expert community, such as Scratch, where the members share and collectively build the aggregated information on specific areas of interest. For example, they use and contribute to developing collective knowledge through Scratch Wiki. It is a community effort to generate a knowledgeable source on Scratch. As an interviewee mentioned, "Well, if anyone has a question, like they wondered something, it's a spot where hopefully they'll be able to find an answer."

Remixing. Remixing provides a unique learning opportunity-that is, learning by example. Remixing is the creative reuse of information or projects to produce new information or expressive materials. Scratch was designed to make it easy for users to remix others' projects. All Scratch projects are under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, which allows freedom to share and remix projects. Once a project is remixed, the Scratch program automatically produces credit for the original project. An individual interviewee explained:

So, remixing is a very important part of Scratch. Without remixing, we wouldn't have been half as cool. And, the good thing is that because of all of this remixing, every single project out there is a tutorial. You can, so if you're interested in drawing a cake, you can just download a project and that has a cake in it and just see how it works and start playing with it. And, that's not possible on any other site or platform or whatever.

Several interviewees concurred: "When I see other people that have added more intricate, more difficult things to their Scratch project, then I'm, like, 'Oh, how did you do that?' I will ask them how to do that. And then I will want to go add that to mine to make my scratch better than it already was." Remixing in Scratch accelerates learning the programming language: "I mean, it [remixing] is really important. When you're learning . . . a typical new programming language, you have to rely on the people that are specifically supplying tutorials, and in Scratch you can just explore projects. You can say, 'Oh, I like this.' And, then you download and you see how it's made." ²¹

Findings revealed that youth feel a sense of empowerment when they create things and make a participatory contribution to the community. The Scratch Wiki administrators mentioned that they liked Scratch Wiki because it is a community effort by youth themselves: "It's quite cool how people can share information over there, because before you had just the Scratch Support on the website. And, only the [MIT] Scratch Team could upload content to there. And, it's kind of cool, how now all this help and support is provided by the community, other than the Scratch Team."

A boy mentioned how he feels when he engages in creative activities using a tool that allows flexibility and choices:

What I like about Scratch is how it's not just passive. We're actively working with media and it allows everyone to do so. And, that's important. The longer I use Scratch, the more I start to hate TV. It's very weird. But, I mean, TV is just such a passive medium. You just look at it. You're looking at the television and it just comes to you for a long time. And, I guess, I can still watch a nice movie, but it has to be nice. Just this annoying television shows [ sic], well, it's really annoying, just so passive and you just lose your time sitting without doing anything, and I sort of like to be productive. And, I like how Scratch allows me to do it, but I bet there are more people who like to be productive, and it also allows them to be. With script you can basically do whatever you want. You can make a very big diversity of projects, and you can use it to make PowerPoint-like presentations with some graphics. I already did for school. That's very cool. But, you can make games, information about yourself, and that's what I like about it. You're not really restricted to games or whatever, you just start and do whatever you want. ²²

Young people's creative activities are a way of expressing themselves. The digital environment in particular offers young people the chance to be powerful and to express their identity and creativity. ²³ Youth find value in expressing themselves online, because self-expression online plays several roles in their identity construction, including self-reflection, catharsis, self-documentation, identity experimentation, and social validation of self from their audience. ²⁴ Meanwhile, by creating and publishing information within a specific area of interest, young people define themselves as experts, geeks, freaks, or artists within particular communities. ²⁵ For instance, personal web pages maintained by youth reveal a range of information and opinions of youth, such as favorite music, sports, daily experiences, jokes, photos, and more. ²⁶

Scratchers in this study were engaged in expressive activities, particularly digital media production, in both school and everyday life. An IJIMS participant mentioned, "I have been using Scratch [when I was not] in IJIMS. One particular time [I created Scratch projects] was just on my own . . . trying out what was on my mind." An interviewee's description revealed how his Scratch production is a way of self-expression:

Interviewee: It [working with Scratch] does help because that's one of those programs where you're not limited. You can do a lot of things. It's pretty much putting your emotions in a computer screen. And it kind of helps. It's kind of relieving in a way.

Interviewer: Can you explain the word "relieving"?

Interviewee: You can just put it out there, and you know that it's down there, so you can go back and look at it another time. So if you were feeling sad, you could go there, and you could just make a Scratch and just let it out.

Socializing

Youth have an intrinsic need for social and connected information behaviors. ²⁷ Traditional interpersonal information behaviors where youth seek and share information with peers, family members, teachers, and librarians in their local communities are still prevalent. Digital youth, however, are capable of expanding the boundaries of their interpersonal information behaviors by interacting with diverse people and forming communities of practice beyond geographical restrictions. ²⁸

By the time the interviews were conducted in 2010, Scratch did not provide many communication tools other than public forums and comments. Despite that, Scratchers from different parts of the world collaborated all the time. An interviewee discussed Scratch members' strong need for collaboration:

Well, the weird [thing] about people collaborating on Scratch is that except for remixing, there is really nothing that helps you collaborate. And, people just find their way of doing it. So, there are Scratch Companies you might have heard of. So, people form a group using a gallery. They usually all just use technologies that were not intended to be used as a collaborative platform. . . . [T]hat also makes collaboration on Scratch cool. People seem to be, they really want to do it and they don't just do it because it's there. They find their own way of collaborating. That's really cool.

All interviewees in Phase 2 were actively interacting with others during their problem-solving or knowledge-creation activities-that is, creation of an online magazine in IJIMS and development of Scratch Wiki and Scratch Resources. Scratch Wiki itself, in particular, is where youth collaboratively create knowledge about Scratch. The nature of Wiki-that is, being edited by anyone and having the ability to see previous versions-enhances the collaborative/collective aspect of Wiki as an information resource, as discussed by two participants:

As far as collaboration, what's really nice on the Wiki is that you can of course compare the text from the previous revisions, [which] I think is one of the helpful things about collaboration, which you can't always do, like, maybe you're in a collaboration and you remake a project. You can't really see directly what changed.

The good thing about the Wiki is that it can be edited by everyone. And, still always stores older versions. So, when someone does something wrong, they don't have to feel shy or whatever, you can just revert the edit.

During collaborative problem solving or creation activities, youth frequently exchange non-task-related comments or actions to build rapport and trust. Although they have never met in person, the individual interviewees mentioned that they make "lots of good friends in Scratch." Interviewees point out the many modern technologies that help them overcome the geographical distance and build relationships and trust one another:

There's stuff to help people talk online. It can help you make friendships and things, even without meeting, though it is kind of sad, like oh, you probably will never be able to meet this person.

On Scratch, there are the forums. And as you use them, you start to see people and sort of generally become friends with some of them. . . . If we share interest in something, then it helps. And the people that we were in with our collaboration group, they're friendly.

Another interviewee concurred that one could build relationships and trust online:

In the modern Internet, you know, here we use emoticons, you know, especially if you're a kid, you understand, you know, like texting-you understand how to use abbreviations and kind of how people act. And, for example, you end up-people will exaggerate things of course, you know, but it's all part of the process. Yeah. We also have to, like, when meeting new people, you know, we have to assume good faith. We never try to act-assume that they're trying to do something bad or assume that they were trying to do a certain thing. So that's kind of an important thing about being on the wiki.

Opportunities and Challenges

The findings show the ways in which digital youth have an increased sense of control over learning, creative, and social aspects of their life; as Dresang suggested earlier, Net Generation youth are increasingly in the driver's seat. ²⁹ Digital age information behavior offers a new type of learning opportunity, which supports both autonomous and social learning. Information seeking-especially in which youth can choose what to explore in what order in the digital environment-allows them self-taught and autonomous problem solving. Beyond seeking and use, engaging in productive and creative information behavior seems to provide digital age youth with an enhanced sense of empowerment. As information creators, digital youth have a growing chance to be powerful and express their creativity and identity. They also create information collaboratively and contribute to the development of collective knowledge. Moreover, youth feel a sense of agency during their social interactions, especially when their voices are accepted and they can make a meaningful contribution to the information world to which they belong. As demonstrated in the study, Radical Change theory provides a unique perspective to ferret out the potential of non-traditional behaviors to empower youth who are immersed in digital culture.

The theory, however, is not naive enough to overlook challenges in the digital environment. While most digital youth appreciate an increasing amount of information at their fingertips, processing a range of information demands a high level of thinking skills and information-credibility judgment. Today's youth must be equipped with digital information literacy skills in order to have a meaningful learning experience through information seeking. The creative information behavior of youth raises ethical issues concerning ownership as well as the problem of a digital participation gap, because advanced technologies that facilitate creation require a high cost. Collective knowledge can be challenged by quality concerns since anyone without traditional authority can contribute. Furthermore, constant connectivity and increasing online interaction bring up issues of privacy and online safety. The availability of diverse perspectives does not always lead to a broadening perspective or high tolerance when young people's social interaction is deliberately limited to a circle of like-minded people. Such challenges have implications for the future of Radical Change theory.

Future of the Theory

While the theory may not provide direct applications to all those challenges in the digital environment, Radical Change theory offers a valuable perspective for tackling the difficult issues for both professionals and scholars. The theory guides us to choose an approach to supporting a sense of agency in youth, instead of being intimidated by the dangers of the digital environment and attempting to protect "the innocence of youth" by limiting their access to information and technologies. I believe that the implications of the theory include the significant role of information professionals guiding and supporting digital youth in ways that do not stifle the digital age principles of connectivity, interactivity, and access. The principle of access can be seen as providing the foundation for Radical Change in both information resources and youth behaviors. Dresang explains that "an affirmative regard for Radical Change resources rests in part on a belief that the principles of intellectual freedom (based on the First Amendment) are applicable to youth as well as to adults." She further suggests that "the danger of withholding information from youth far exceeds the danger of providing it. The onus is on us, the adults who care for and work with young people, to guide them to it, give them the background to sort through it and interpret it, and write, edit, and publish it in books that give them the opportunity to reflect upon and absorb it." ³⁰ Fostering digital youth's twenty-first-century skills, such as digital information literacy, is key in order for them to truly take advantage of opportunities through the interactive and connected digital environment.

I offer the following diagram as a potential way that Radical Change theory can guide future research. It is a framework for studying the information behavior of digital youth, radical resources, and the outcomes for youth in obtaining twenty-first-century skills. Dresang recognized the framework to be "the next step in understanding digital age children's information behavior and the role of libraries in meeting their needs." ³¹ The diagram flows from the digital age principles-interactivity, connectivity, and access-to the Radical Change resources and behaviors that represent the principles. It depicts interaction between resources and people. Owing to its emphasis on the synergistic combination of users and information resources in the digital age, ³² researchers can benefit from the theory in investigating how digital age resources and changing users interact and influence one another. The theory can also be applied to exploring the effectiveness of Radical Change resources in promoting the twenty-first-century skills of digital youth, just as Pantaleo's findings proposed that Radical Change resources are tools to teach critical thinking skills, visual literacy, and more. ³³ Finally, the diagram calls for future research that explores how the interaction between changing resources and youth may have an impact on youth obtaining twenty-first-century skills, because these are critical skills in enhancing a sense of agency in youth by increasing their capacity to learn, create, and socialize.

Notes

1. Eliza T. Dresang, Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1999), 58.

2. Ibid., xxiv.

3. Eliza T. Dresang, "Digital Age Libraries and Youth: Learning Labs, Literacy Leaders, Radical Resources," in The Information Behavior of a New Generation : Children and Teens in the 21st Century, ed. Jamshid Beheshti and J. Andrew Large (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013), 93-116.

4. Eliza T. Dresang and Bowie Kotrla, "Radical Change Theory and Synergistic Reading for Digital Age Youth," Journal of Aesthetics Education 43 (2009): 94.

5. Dresang, Radical Change.

6. Eliza T. Dresang, "Radical Change Revisited: Dynamic Digital Age Books for Youth," Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education 8 (September 13, 2008), para 2, http://www.citejournal.org/vol8/iss3/seminal/article2.cfm.

7. Sylvia Pantaleo, Exploring Student Response to Contemporary Picturebooks (Toronto Italian Studies) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).

8. Dawnene D. Hassett, "Reading Hypertextually: Children's Literature and Comprehension Instruction," New Horizons for Learning, March 22, 2008, http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/literacy/hassett.htm; Dawnene D. Hammerberg, "Reading and Writing 'Hypertexually': Children's Literature, Technology, and Early Writing Instruction," Language Arts 78 (2001): 207-16.

9. Marta J. Abele, Responses to Radical Change Children's Books by Preservice Teachers (Capella University, 2003).

10. Eliza T. Dresang, "The Information-Seeking Behavior of Youth in the Digital Environment," Library Trends 54 (2005): 178-96; Eliza T. Dresang, "Radical Change," in Theories of Information Behavior, ed. Karen E. Fisher, Sanda Erdelez, and Lynne McKechnie (Medford, NJ: Information Today, 2005), 298-302; Eliza T. Dresang and Kyungwon Koh, "Radical Change Theory, Youth Information Behavior, and School Libraries," Library Trends 58, no. 1 (2009): 26-50.

11. Dresang, "The Information-Seeking Behavior of Youth in the Digital Environment."

12. Kyungwon Koh, "Theory-to-Research-to-Theory Strategy: A Research-Based Expansion of Radical Change Theory," Library & Information Science Research 64, no. 9 (2013): 1826-41, doi:10.1016/j.lisr.2012.09.003; Kyungwon Koh, "Adolescents' Information-Creating Behavior Embedded in Digital Media Practice Using Scratch," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 64, no. 9 (2013): 1826-41, doi:10.1002/asi.22878.

13. Hsiu Hsieh and Sarah E Shannon, "Three Approaches to Qualitative Content Analysis," Qualitative Health Research 15 (2005): 1277-88; Yan Zhang and Barbara M. Wildemuth, "Qualitative Analysis of Content," in Applications of Social Research Methods to Questions in Information and Library Science, ed. Barbara M. Wildemuth (Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2009), 308-19; Koh, "Theory-to-Research-to-Theory Strategy."

14. MIT Media Lab, "Scratch: Imagine, Program, Share," 2012, http://scratch.mit.edu/.

15. IJIMS, "Interactive Journalism Institute for Middle Schoolers," 2010, http://www.tcnj.edu/~ijims/.

16. Brenda Dervin and Rea Devakos, "Deep, Efficient, and Dialogic Study of Undergraduate Information Seeking and Use: A Methodological Exploration," 2010, http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/asist2010poster.pdf; Brenda Dervin, "Focus Groups for Participatory Research: Design Using Systematic Dialogic Principles Drawn from Sense-Making Methodology," 2007.

17. Koh, "Theory-to-Research-to-Theory Strategy"; Koh, "Adolescents' Information-Creating Behavior Embedded in Digital Media Practice Using Scratch."

18. Amanda Lenhart et al., "Social Media and Mobile Internet Use among Teens and Young Adults," 2010, 26-27, http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults/Summary-of-Findings.aspx.

19. Mizuko Ito et al., Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009).

20. Ibid., 273.

21. Koh, "Adolescents' Information-Creating Behavior Embedded in Digital Media Practice Using Scratch."

22. Ibid.

23. Rebekah Willett, "Consumer Citizens Online: Structure, Agency, and Gender in Online Participation," in Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, ed. David Buckingham (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 49-69.

24. Susannah Stern, "Producing Sites, Exploring Identities: Youth Online Authorship," in Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, ed. Buckingham, 95-118.

25. Ito et al., Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out.

26. Sandra Weber and Claudia Mitchell, "Imaging, Keyboarding, and Posting Identities: Young People and New Media Technologies," in Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, ed. Buckingham, 25-47.

27. Dresang, "The Information-Seeking Behavior of Youth in the Digital Environment," 20.

28. Cecilia R Aragon et al., "A Tale of Two Online Communities: Fostering Collaboration and Creativity in Scientists and Children," Proceedings of the Seventh ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition, 2009, 9-18.

29. Dresang, Radical Change.

30. Ibid., xv, xvi.

31. Dresang, "Digital Age Libraries and Youth: Learning Labs, Literacy Leaders, Radical Resources," 112.

32. Dresang and Kotrla, "Radical Change Theory and Synergistic Reading for Digital Age Youth."

33. Pantaleo, Exploring Student Response to Contemporary Picturebooks.

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Radical Change Theory: Framework for Empowering Digital Youth

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Kyungwon Koh, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma Koh, Kyungwon. " Radical Change Theory: Framework for Empowering Digital Youth." Journal of Research on Libraries & Young Adults 5 (2015): n. page. Web. . Eliza T. Dresang influenced numerous researchers and professionals by equipping them to understand and better serve digital youth.

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This article states that the world we live in is all technology based and that the youth is involved with this hyperlink more so that ever. With that being said the theory describes how this digital age is influencing the way the youth looks at, reads, and interpret printed books.

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Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age (Dresang, 1999) is a landmark work that examines ways in which young readers are affected by the Digital Age. The impetus for the book grew out of Eliza Dresang's observation that printed books with nonlinear, interactive qualities appeal strongly to contemporary children. She noted that digital media have served as a catalyst leading to new styles of printed books with graphics in new forms and formats, nonsequential organization, and multiple layers of meaning.

Documentation of this generational shift is the foundation of the book. Printed books and reader's reactions to these books are affected by the Digital Age. Social networking on the Internet is evolving rapidly. Youth are spending increasing amounts of time in conversations with others in this nonlinear, hyperlinked environment. Dresang observed that this has influenced the way in which youth read and interact with printed books.

Radical Change and its thesis are well known among school librarians. It likely appeals to librarians because it provides an explanation for the changes in the reading habits of youth that they have observed.

The second reason for republication to make it accessible to a broader audience that extends beyond librarians. Librarians and educational technology specialists are affected by many of the technological and social events occurring outside of schools. Each group can contribute different perspectives about the implications. Radical Change provides common ground for this conversation.

The CITE Journal is a nexus that encompasses science educators, mathematics educators, English educators, and social studies educators in conversation with educational technology specialists. No group has been more affected by advances in technology than librarians, so we are pleased to have the opportunity to incorporate their perspective into the dialog about teacher preparation.

Future teachers need to be aware of the changes in young readers that are occurring in order to meet their needs. Radical Change offers an excellent starting point and context for thinking about implications for teaching in today's schools.

We also encourage you to read Dresang's contemporary reflection piece on Radical Change, published in CITE Journal as a related article.

Glen Bull & Lynn Bell
Editors

Preface and Chapter 1 excerpted from
Dresang, E. T. (1999). Radical change: Books for youth in a digital age. New York: H. W. Wilson. Copyright 1999. Reprinted with permission from the author.

Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age

Eliza T. Dresang

PREFACE

The headings in this Preface-as throughout the book-are designed to serve as guideposts for the reader to use in deciding which topics to pursue.

The Intended Audience

This book is written for librarians and elementary and secondary teachers and for university educators who teach about and study books for youth. Parents who are "growing up digital" with their children are another of its potential audiences. It most likely will be of interest, as well, to scholars in childhood studies programs, many of which have been recently established in universities across America, and to other researchers who are in the forefront of studying (and caring about) the relationship between the digital world and children. I also wrote this book for the many authors, illustrators, designers, editors, and publishers who have demonstrated a commitment to books that have particular digital-age relevancy-and hope all in the publishing trade, including publishers of digital products, will find it provocative. Those are the specific intended audiences. The general audience consists of all those who care about children, their books, and the excitement of the digital environment. (Maybe even a few radical young readers will enjoy dipping in here and there.)

The Nature of the Beast

Radical Change is a way of understanding books that can be used by anyone interested in literature for youth-used to identify books with characteristics reflecting the interactivity, connectivity, and access of the digital world. Its relevance is not confined to the products of the digital age, however. It is a theory that can be applied to books for youth published in any time period, because digital-age characteristics existed both in society and in literature even before they became as commonplace as they are today.

Although literature with these traits may be regarded as either negative or positive for youth, I regard the type of literature singled out by Radical Change (and the underlying societal supports for it) as cause for optimism. I bring four basic assumptions that codify the positive aspects of the digital world and the opportunities for young people in it to this study of literature identified by Radical Change (see page xxiv).

An affirmative regard for Radical Change resources rests in part on a belief that the principles of intellectual freedom (based on the First Amendment) are applicable to youth as well as to adults. There are many who see their mission in life as "protecting the innocence of youth" by limiting their access to information. Even if one does not believe philosophically in access for children, the futility of attempting to shield youth from information seems apparent as we read and hear and view daily reports of atrocities in the news. I am not naive enough, having worked with children much of my professional life and having mothered three, to think that the abundance of information in the digital world and concomitantly in literature for youth is the answer to all the world's ills. Nor am I naive enough not to recognize its dangers. But the danger of withholding information from youth far exceeds the danger of providing it. The onus is on us, the adults who care for and work with young people, to guide them to it, give them the background to sort through it and interpret it, and write, edit, and publish it in books that give them the opportunity to reflect upon and absorb it. A group of graduate students in a course on Radical Change at Florida State pointed out that the antiseptic world described in The Giver (Lowry, 1994) is the antithesis of the exciting, challenging-if not so safe-world of Radical Change.

On the other hand, I make it abundantly clear throughout this book that my enthusiasm for Radical Change books in no way disparages the other, vast majority of good books for youth. My belief in Radical Change is linked to my belief in access to many different kinds of experiences, including those encountered in more traditionally presented books for youth. And besides, as mentioned below, the radical soon becomes the regular. (To youth the radical is already the regular.)

Although I'm writing about books and find many of life's greatest pleasures there, I am not among those who deplore the virtual world. For me online digital resources are the answer to my lifelong need to have a vast amount of information at my fingertips and to explore freely many topics, some of which I can only discover by browsing. On any typical day while writing this book, I would move readily back and forth from my word processor to Web sites with related information, statistical sources, e-mail from colleagues, online bookstores, and library catalogs. But such fantastic digital resources do not keep me from the library, nor from the handheld book. I value exploration among selected passages in books; I like the chance to study and absorb a subject in depth that the handheld book provides. I want children to have this same freedom to explore information openly in all areas. And book and digital resources are not antithetical for me-nor will they be for the twentyfirst-century child.

There is a threat to the handheld book for youth in this digital world. It's not that the handheld book will disappear; it may come to us in a different form or by a different distribution method, but it will always exist. The danger is rather that the "protect the innocent children" forces will win out in the world of handheld books. And if they do, the contents of books will become largely irrelevant to youth-or relevant only as light entertainment. Because in the digital world, no matter how hard the adults try, information will not be kept from the young. And, as has already begun to happen, books-both fiction and nonfiction-must provide the same relevance and opportunities for exploration found in the online world, or they will indeed become relics on the trash heap.

The Roots of Radical Change

As I explain more fully in Chapter 1, the development of the concept Radical Change began nine years ago with a single book- Black and White by David Macaulay (1990)-and a single individual: Kate McClelland, Assistant Director and Head of Children's Services at Perrot Memorial Library in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, soon became an inspired collaborator. She and together and individually, have taken Radical Change "on the road" for the past six years, including appearances at three national conferences devoted specifically to the topic. I have taught graduate courses about Radical Change and have written articles about it for numerous journals with diverse audiences, e.g., CHLA Quarterly, Book Links, Library Trends, Theory into Practice, and The Horn Book. In all these arenas, the concepts in this book were tried tested, refined-and sometimes radically changed. But the fundamental theory has never given way under this scrutiny-it has only gained strength as time has gone on.

Perry Nodelman, Professor of English at the University of Winnipeg, children's literature critic, and himself the author of several novels for youth, inspired much of the intellectual muscle behind this book; you will find his name appearing time and again. The depth and acuity of his analyses and his concern for the children who read books have challenged and inspired me be as a scholar and as a teacher.

One day in 1996, after I had moved to Florida from Wisconsin and my two decade-long job directing the library, media, and technology program in the Madison School District, I noticed in the e-mail signature file of one of my new faculty colleagues, Kathleen Burnett (now Associate Dean), the following quote:

Yet clearly, human thought processes include nonlinear, nonsequential, and interactive characteristics which, when acknowledged by traditional information structures, are not supported. In fact, one might characterize the history of information transfer as a tyranny again such characteristics, that is a tyranny against the rhizome.

Kathy Burnett's image of a rhizome-a horizontal, root-like structure with sprouts here, there and everywhere (first used by French thinkers Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in the 1980s to describe an ideal book)-seemed to me the perfect analogy for Radical Change. I liked its suggestion of organic growth rather than rigid, hierarchical structure. Although I mention the image of a rhizome only briefly in this book, it has been constantly in my mind as the structure that explains the way the changes in literature in youth "sprout up" here and there just as they do in the online environment-connected yet heterogeneous, and in a nonlinear manner. One reason for proposing Radical Change to others is to offset a "tyranny against the rhizome" in literature for youth.

Finally, an opportunity offered by Marc Aronson, Senior Editor at Henry Holt, to read the manuscript of his fine nonfiction book for youth, Art Attack: A Short Cultural History of the Avant-Garde (1998), honed my thinking about Radical Change. Seeing the avant-garde described as first challenging the status quo, then becoming mainstream, reinforced my notion that a thing is radical in the sense of "provocative" for only a short period of time. After that, other meanings of radical, such as "fundamental" or "deep-rooted," take over. This strengthened my belief that the extraordinary changes we were seeing in literature for youth are here to stay.

A Journey Through the Book

The format of this book was inspired by Richard Wurman's Information Anxiety (1989). His book gave me the first comprehensive view of how form and format can enhance understanding while substantially reducing anxiety. It is my hope that the format of this book will allow you, the reader, to pick and choose, to see what is considered "core" to the argument. The annotated Table of Contents is the first guide for the reader. After Chapter 1: What Is Radical Change: An Introduction, Chapter 2 delineates the characteristics of books so identified. Chapter 3 focuses on digital-age youth and how the way they think and learn often leads them to prefer radically changed literature. Chapters 4 through 9 provide an in-depth exploration of the types of Radical Change. Chapter 10 focuses on how the sense of story has changed and yet remains the same in the digital world. Chapter 11 responds to the question, "What is a good book in the digital age?"

Throughout the book, border information relates to the adjacent text, providing ready reference and (hopefully) added value to the discussion. Another part of the book that will serve as a useful reference guide for readers is Appendix A, a compilation of more than two hundred books annotated to highlight their qualities of Radical Change. I've tried to represent all the characteristics of Radical Change through the books in this list (which, of course, had to be highly selective). Delving into these books is perhaps the best way to verify for yourself the existence of books with Radical Change characteristics-and to learn how to recognize them in the future. From this Appendix the trail leads to the digital world and to the Radical Change Web site at

I will update the Appendix frequently on this Web site. In addition, the site will provide a forum for discussion of Radical Change principles and for links to up-to-date, related Web sites as they become apparent. Thus, this Appendix will be the part of this book that is continuously updated, yet it will also continue to serve as the basis for understanding Radical Change. Appendixes B and C are tables, the one showing changing attitudes to childhood in western society, and the other showing the expansion of Radical Change literature among books singled out for honors. Appendix D provides some suggestions for the use of Radical-Change books; Appendix E lists some Frequently Asked Questions about Radical Change-and directs the reader to the Radical Change Web site, where responses can be found and more such questions posed.

The Future of Radical Change

It must be recognized from the start that this book is about theory development. It represents scholarship that comes from much reading, thinking, observing, and analyzing, tempered by a lifelong association with others interested in the study of literature for youth, and with children, books, and (since it has been available) the digital world. It comes from trying out new paradigms, as Joel Barker suggests in his Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future (1992). It is a book based upon intellectual analysis. From the perspective of Information Studies, it fits into the area of intellectual access to information. I will continue to apply the Radical Change theory to literature, looking for new types of interactivity, connectivity, and access in books for youth, past and present.

But I am interested also in pursuing Radical Change using other research methodologies. With one faculty colleague, Myke Gluck, I hope to follow the trail of information-seeking behavior which I set out on some years ago with my dissertation and test the "usability" of books reflecting Radical Change principles. I have begun to develop a sense of the ways in which Radical Change may be particularly relevant to youth who have previously been denied access to information, and want particularly to test these observations. In other directions, I hope to look formally at the language of discourse, to compare, in content analyses, books that do not have the characteristics of Radical Change with that do, to more clearly understand the difference. I also want to study Radical Change from the point of view of the diffusion of information to see how librarians, teachers, parents, and children are learning about, adopting, and using the books of Radical Change. I have started this research with a federally-funded Institute held at FSU in 1998. In the future I hope to collect data to expand upon and extend the usefulness of the ideas in this book.

Currently I am co-authoring a book called Dealing with Censorship in the 21st Century: A Guide for Librarians and Teachers (Greenwood, forthcoming). The topic is relevant to the survival of Radical Change literature. I hope to continue discussions with academic and professional colleagues in person and via the Radical Change Web site, as such discussions have proved invaluable in the past. Above all else, I hope to continue to talk with young readers about their books.

Radical Change has created an extended community of adults and children talking and thinking together-this is the best that the future can hold.

-Eliza T. Dresang
November 1998

WARNING
This book appears to contain a number of stories that do not necessarily occur at the same time. Then again, it may contain only one story. In any event, careful inspection of both words and pictures is recommended. (Macaulay, Black and White, 1990, title page)

This book grew out of a puzzle. The idea that something radical is taking place in children's books first occurred to me when I was a member of the 1991 Caldecott Committee. This Committee awarded the medal for the best picture book of the year to David Macaulay's Black and White (1990). After excitement over the award died down, I began to wonder why Black and White appealed so strongly to contemporary children but not always to contemporary adults. Like the book itself, the reaction to it seemed a puzzle. Looking around, I discovered other books that evoked the same sort of mixed response. Like Black and White, these books invariably had interactive, nonlinear qualities. The words interactive and non linear struck a familiar chord. These are words heard often in contemporary society; they are used to describe digital media such as CD-ROMs and the Internet.

David Macaulay explained
a lot about the "radical" or unusual nature of Black and White in his Caldecott Medal Acceptance speech, when he said that "it is essential to see, not merely to look; that words and pictures can support each other; that it isn't necessary to think in a straight line to make sense; and finally that risk can be rewarded" (1991, p. 346).

My Caldecott colleague, Kate McClelland, and I began to give talks for other librarians and teachers about this book-digital connection. As we talked we learned. We began to recognize other changes in books-not just in formats, but in perspectives and in topics, and not just in picture books, but in all types of books. Eventually we realized that the changes in books for young people have a lot to do with changes in society, a society that daily becomes more interactive and connected through digital networks. We began to see more and more similarities between this world and the world of literature. We saw that something was happening in books for youth, and we called it "Radical Change."

After one of our first public presentations about Radical Change, a librarian came up to the podium to say, "You've saved my life. I have to appear before my school board next Tuesday and convince them why we need funds for both books and computers. I could not quite see the connection until I heard you talk. Now I know exactly what I'm going to say." Many more librarians, educators, critics, parents, and young people themselves have grown excited by this new way of thinking about literature and literary-digital connections. They say the concept of Radical Change helps them understand, select, and use books in this digital age, and they have asked to have it all written down to use as a guide. It was for this reason that Radical Change, an idea about books, became a book itself.

Change needs no definition. Radical Change does. Understanding the various meanings of radical helps in understanding the extensive changes in contemporary literature for youth.

The English word radical derives from the Latin radix, meaning "root." I think of the entire body of existing literature for youth as a sort of rhizome (a horizontal, root-like structure), from which new developments emerge in a random, spontaneous manner.

Next, the word radical means "fundamental." The changes in literature for youth are basic.

The term radical often describes extreme or insurgent actions in times of political turmoil. Literary critic Rod McGillis asks in The Nimble Reader (1996) whether radically-styled contemporary books for youth are "in any political sense radical, or do they put to rest the transgressive instincts of their readers?" (pp. 111-12).

The word radical also means "a departure from the usual or traditional." All changes identified as Radical emerge out of, but at the same time depart from, the time-honored characteristics of literature for youth. Some teachers, librarians, and critics are upset when they see such changes referred to as "new" or "departures," because they can think of books with many of the same traits that were published in the past. These adults are often less disturbed when they realize that the literary changes which depart from the traditional may well have appeared in the past, but not in significant numbers. Now they appear in far greater quantities. What was highly unusual is now commonplace, in part because of a more supportive environment.

Finally, the word radical means "extremely different from commonly existing views." Most changes in literature for youth are not extreme. Nonetheless, a few of the examples described in this book do represent developments that are "extremely different" from the literature of the past.

Considering all these definitions together, Radical Change means fundamental change, departing from the usual or traditional in literature for youth, although still related to it. According to an ancient Chinese proverb, wisdom begins when things are called by their right names. Radical Change gives those of us with a serious interest in contemporary literature for youth the right name to apply to what otherwise would remain an enigma.

"Radical change" is used in two different ways throughout this book, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1
KEY

The term Radical Change with initial caps is used to describe the framework or theory that allows the reader to identify literature with characteristics of the digital age.

The term radical change with no capitals is used to refer to the evidence of the changes themselves in literature or (sometimes) in society.

DOES RADICAL CHANGE APPLY TO ALL BOOKS FOR YOUTH?
Radical Change can apply to all types of books for youth. However, in this book it will be applied only to texts that are generally regarded as "literature" for children or young adults.

Overall, the annual children's Book Selling Survey conducted in March 1996 showed steady sales of children's books. Over 34 percent of the respondents increased their children's book sales over the previous year, while 31.5 percent reported no change (Roback and Maughan, 1996, p. 52). Children's Books in Print (1998) lists more than 127,000 active titles.

WHO ARE THE YOUTH?
When books for children change, it follows that parents, teachers, and others will raise concerns and questions about what this means for reading. Reading in relation to Radical Change means "decoding" words and pictures to arrive at meaning. Evolving ideas and issues about reader response and constructing "story" now and in the future are scrutinized as part of the discussion.

A good friend in publishing recently asked me to guess the age that editors "always" say intended readers are, when they want to sell a book to an editorial committee. The answer (which I did not know) is eight to twelve. Whether or not this practice is widespread, setting age limits is imprecise at best and often unduly restrictive.

The only type of literary
books for youth which seem
thus far not to have been
influenced in a substantial
way by the radical changes
of the digital age are those
known as "easy readers."
Perhaps publishers and
authors believe that
children need linear text,
simplified concepts, and
familiar subjects in order
to learn to read.

WHAT IS THE DIGITAL AGE?
The readers (or listeners and viewers) with whom this book is concerned range from preschool through adolescence, and include as well any other readers who choose materials published and marketed specifically for young people. The specific age of young readers is rarely referred to in this book, and when age is mentioned, it is usually the age intended by the author or illustrator, rather than the age of the actual reader. These readers are the young people Don Tapscott calls the Net Generation in his book Growing Up Digital (1996). They were born after 1977. They have grown up with televisions and computers. Indeed, computers have become more evident and available each year of their lives.

The digital age referred to in this book is the societal landscape that has gradually emerged as computers have become more commonplace and as the Internet has become a locale where children can learn and play. The digital age was clearly emerging in the 1990s, the years that are the focus of this book. No specific beginning date can be identified, for this era, like the books it has influenced, evolved over time, out of what came before. Digital refers not only to the media themselves but also to the interactive, connective qualities they possess, which seem to have permeated much of society. Nicholas Negroponte, head of the MIT Media Lab, vividly describes the impact of this digital culture in the collection of his columns from Wired Magazine called Being Digital (1995): "Being digital is different. We are not waiting on any invention. It is here. It is now. It is almost genetic in its nature, in that each generation will become more digital than the preceding one" (p. 231).
What Does Digital Mean?

In 1997 the Children's
Book Council (CBC), an
organization of publishers
of books and book-related
multimedia products for
youth, compiled a bibliography, Not Just for ChildrenAnymore. It is stated in the
Preface that "children's
books are now books for the
young and the older. One
thing is certain: they are
Not Just for Children
Anymore!" The pamphlet is
available in electronic form
on the CBC web site < http://www.cbcbooks.org/navigation/parindex/htm>.

Digital is a term that is often used when referring to electronic media in the 1990s. There are technical and cultural aspects to its meaning. Technically, digital means media that are created using bytes made up of bits. A bit is a binary unit which is created by the presence or absence of an electrical impulse, in essence a 1 or a 0, thus the name digital. The significance for us is that, because bits and bytes are really only electrical impulses without substantial being, they cannot be fixed into place or frozen in a linear order-they can be endlessly and instantly arranged and rearranged. The electrical impulses of which bytes are composed can speed around the world in seconds-and become something entirely different within a few moments of their arrival at a destination. (In a pre-digital medium, the smallest units of matter-the atoms-once set in place, stay in that order. Print, radio, and television-as originally conceived and transmitted-are pre-digital, linear media.) In a broad sense, digital refers to media which provide for users a high level of choice and interactivity because the bits and bytes can be rearranged and transmitted so easily.

1960s

Television becomes widely available; the global village begins

1970s

Internet precursor comes into use

1980s

Personal computers and digital media become widely available; video games bring digital media to youth

1990s

Internet becomes widely available; "older" electronic media such as television become digitized; technologies converge

In 1997, 44 percent of
all U.S. households had
personal computers. But
an astonishing 60 percent
of the households with
children had them.
Predictions are that by
the year 2000, nearly half
the households with
children will be online
(Tapscott, 1997, p. 22-23).
Network Wizards, an online
source which provides
statistics on worldwide
connectivity, can be found
at < http://www.nw.com/>.

DIGITAL-AGE PROPHET
The digital age acknowledges the continued influence of other electronic media, but the focus is on the spreading network of interconnected personal computers. This is the age of the Internet, the Information Superhighway, the National Information Infrastructure. It is the age of digitized media, often in multimedia format. While there are certainly downsides and pitfalls, the more positive, nurturing, challenging aspects of this digital age can unleash the potential of all of us-and, most importantly, children.

"The medium is the message." "The global village." "Hot and cool media." These are all common phrases coined by Marshall McLuhan. Thirty-some years ago, McLuhan wrote extensively and passionately about the electronic environment. Although his ideas were often speculative rather than "proven," and criticized as such, they've been persistently discussed during thirty years of immense social, technological, and political change. Many of McLuhan's concepts seem more relevant than ever. Recognizing his continued influence, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently reissued his book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, originally published in 1964.
The Global Village

The impact of the emerging
electronic age gained
widespread attention during the sixties with
Marshall McLuhan's The Medium Is the Massage (1967). This was McLuhan's
only best-seller, and it
brought is ideas to the
general public. At his death
in 1980, McLuhan was not
particularly respected as
academician or spokesperson for popular culture. But,
says Gary Wolf, executive
editor of HotWired, "in the
confusion of the digital
revolution, McLuhan is
relevant again"
(1996, p. 124).

Over and over McLuhan proposes that the electronic media are breaking down old habits of thought formed by the impact of Gutenberg and the printing press. The isolationist, nationalistic organization of the world will also be broken down, he says, as people begin to communicate via media that are involving and nonhierarchical. Even more than McLuhan imagined, the global community not only exists, but is increasingly interactive.

Hot and Cool Media
McLuhan and Books
Luhan described media as either "hot," or not requiring active participation on the part of the recipient of the message, or "cool," requiring a high degree of participation. According to McLuhan, a hot" medium is one that is filled with the data the user needs for garnering the message. Often it calls into play only one of the five senses. Radio is a "hot" medium. So are handheld books-they marshal information and narrow the field of choice for the reader. Television, on the other hand, is a "cool" medium. It brings into play at least two senses and necessitates more extensive user involvement. Although McLuhan's examples can be challenged, he saw beyond the limitations of a one-way broadcast and defined a desirable, evolving principle of the new media: interactivity.

McLuhan did not abandon books. He suggested transforming them. He transformed the books he himself wrote in precisely the same ways and for the same reasons that handheld books for youth are being transformed now. McLuhan spoke of one of the concepts of Radical Change, the interaction between print and electronic media, when he said, "Our job is not to wreck the book but save it by teaching grammars of new media" (quoted in Neill, 1971, p. 311). McLuhan said television was a "cool" medium because it is composed of "bits" which make up a mosaic-predicting the mosaic of the digital world, before it came into being. According to Sam Neill, a librarian who has studied McLuhan's work,

The effect of the mosaic approach ... evident in his publications, has naturally caused great howls to arise from those who expect the argument of a man's point of view to march forward word by word, page by page, chapter by chapter, each one rising out of and developing the preceding, to culminate in a visible and classifiable conclusion. He is accused of being a "communicator who can't communicate." (p. 312)

This imaginary dialogue between two contemporary children and their aunt, a McLuhan fan, is meant to show which of
McLuhan's ideas seem valid at the beginning of the 21st century and which need rethinking. Black and White (1990) by David Macaulay is discussed extensively in subsequent chapters. It is a prototype of Radical Change.

Radical Change in Literature for Youth and McLuhan's Ideas
McLuhan uses three juxtaposed formats in The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1951) -advertisements, short witty quotations and statements, and an essay about advertising's cultural relevance. In the introduction to the volume he states, "Because of the circulating point of view in this book, there is no need for it to be read in any special order" (p. vi). In other books, McLuhan used alternating light and boldface type to make points; he published almost entirely visual texts, including The Medium Is the Massage (1967); and he foresaw the hypertext story and the sound bites of modern news reports in Culture Is Our Business (1979), where he said, "In the electric age the connection in narrative and art is omitted.... There is no story line in modern art or news.... Thus, isolated news items are more interesting than editorials" (p. 112). McLuhan employed many other nonlinear, nonsequential techniques in his writing - all of which he described as communication reflecting the electronic world. McLuhan was an accurate prophet for the radical changes to come three decades later to the handheld book for youth.

Nell:
Look, Aunt Rosa, I'm reading a good book by David Macaulay called Black and White.

Aunt Rosa:
Ahhh! Then you have what a man named Marshall McLuhan referred to some thirty years ago as a "hot" medium, something that doesn't require the kind of intense involvement that television viewing or using your computer does. Professor McLuhan thought printed books -other than those he wrote himself -provide a pretty complete and straightforward experience. He compared them to the "mosaic" of electronic media that demand more thought.

Willie:
Have you seen this book? Here, look at it. Look at this, look at the different sizes and shapes of the words, and where they are on this page.

Nell:
Looks like more of a mosaic of items than I see online. And, look, here on the first page, the author won't even tell us how many stories there are in the book. The reader has to figure it out. It's pretty involving. [See Plate 1.]

Aunt Rosa:
Yes. Very unusual, though, for a book. Things happening simultaneously, nonlinearly. Very unusual. I do remember Professor McLuhan's saying that Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland foreshadowed the electronic media with his treatment of time and space. And he talked about what is "left out" for the reader to supply in comics. And he wrote books to show how it could happen. Haven't seen so much of that in good literature for youth-but looks like you have an example here.
What's that on your computer screen?

Nell:
That's an electronic book, a CD-ROM or digital version of David Macaulay's The Way Things Work (1988).

Willie:
See all the graphics that I can click on to get more information? Some of it will be words, some pictures, some video, some audio.

Nell:
Maybe that's what your professor meant by being involved, by a mosaic of media. I can click on my mouse and link from one idea to another. But I have to do the same kind of thinking and can do the same kind of linking of ideas with Black and White.

Aunt Rosa:
A handheld book that demands a large amount of reader interactivity and can be read nonlinearly? An electronic device consisting of linked print, pictures, video, and sound? Ahhh! Perhaps we've reached the kind of combined and compatible communication McLuhan hoped for but did not see. I'll have to think about this....

McLuhan did not use the words Radical Change, but he described a fundamental alteration in life, extremely different from commonly existing views, brought about by new media and potentially transforming books. He did not use children as his primary examples, but exempted no one from the developments he predicted.
More Than Thirty Years Later

A rereading of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland brings a new appreciation of Lewis Carroll's genius and his understanding of children's thought processes. The full text from Project Gutenberg is available on the World Wide Web at <http://www.promo.net/pg/titles/A.html>.

More than thirty years after McLuhan's ideas were introduced, a digital age has emerged, changing our environment dramatically. The computer has become a common household and classroom tool. And the concept of the computer as a "box for manipulating data" has given way to the idea of the computer as a device for communicating data across geographical and political boundaries. Using a computer once required the skills of a professional programmer. Today a preschool child can perform a rich variety of computer operations even before she learns to read.

Nicholas Negroponte emphasizes again and again that "computing is not about computers any more. It is about living" (1995, p. 8). The digital environment is ubiquitous; it cannot be avoided. All forms of information-voice, video, and data-have begun to move around not in linear streams, as with previous media, but rather in bits that are nonsequential and rearrangeable. The new technology, Negroponte says, has created a cultural gap between the generations. Referencing two digital media, CD-ROMs and the Internet, he explains that "one is an electronic book, the other a socializing medium. Both are being taken for granted by children the same way adults don't think about air" (p. 6).

In 1995 a number of books were published that incorporate a wide range of views about the digital world. Being Digital (1995) by Nicholas Negroponte lauds it, while Silicon Snake Oil (1995) by Clifford Stoll finds fault with it. Adding another optimistic(though hardly disinterested) voice to the fray is the Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft Corporation, Bill Gates, with The Road Ahead (1995). The social psychologist Sherry Turkle's Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (1995) examines the effect of the digital world on the individual's sense of identity.

CONNECTIVITY, INTERACTIVITY, AND ACCESS
As do many others, Negroponte believes the Internet is the great agent for change that will usher in McLuhan's global society. He predicts that one billion people will be connected by the year 2000. The epilogue of Negroponte's book is subtitled "An Age of Optimism." His parting comments bring the digital age back to youth: "The control bits of that digital future are more than ever before in the hands of the young. Nothing could make me happier" (p. 231).

Three digital-age concepts underpin and permeate all the radical changes that are taking place in literature for youth: connectivity, interactivity, and access. The librarian who had to explain to her school board that children needed books and computers, often for the same reasons, had recognized this fundamental change in books, but had no way to describe it to others until she heard about Radical Change.

Connectivity refers to the connections that readers make with hypertext-like links, both visual and mental, prompted by the changing forms and formats of handheld books. It also refers to the increased sense of community that these new books bring-both because of the sharing of story among readers that the formats and subjects encourage (sharing that Nell and Willie were experiencing) and because of the new perspectives and vistas with which young readers connect.

Interactivity refers also to both reader and book. The changing formats of books enable a more active, involved reading. All books require active readers-that is, readers must construe meaning and interpret the text, regardless of format. But some books seem to expect readers to react in one particular way while others seem more willing to encourage a wide range of differing responses. Digital-age readers interact with these books by making decisions as they read; they may approach the text in various nonlinear or nonsequential ways that the author does not determine in advance. Readers not only interact with the visual format but may interact with the context by mentally exploring levels of meaning or plateaus of story. The young reader may be encouraged to create or expand portions of the story, most commonly the ending.
WHY HANDHELD BOOKS?
Access refers to the breaking of long-standing barriers in literature for youth-barriers that blocked off certain topics, certain kinds of characters, certain styles of language. Methods of disseminating information more broadly have proliferated since the invention of the printing press. But dissemination of information does not always translate into access to information, especially where children are concerned-the benefits of dissemination have never been as clear for children as they have for adults. However, access to a wide diversity of opinion and perspective has now become possible in the digital world and is beginning to be reflected in children's books, both in a broader range of topics and in the manner in which fictional characters react to the problems presented. Increased intellectual access sometimes provokes in adults the impulse to raise more barriers-possibly a futile effort in the digital world.

If digital media provide a merger of print, video, audio, and graphic components in a dazzling array, why have handheld books at all? Reading a handheld book provides a pleasurable, aesthetic experience both like and not like that of reading print on a screen or experiencing multimedia in a digital format, even when the book and the digital medium have similar characteristics. Much of this book explores the similarities of these experiences rather than the differences. However, books have certain unique advantages. The handheld book provides the reader with the time to linger and ponder issues that might fly by in digital space. Reading a handheld book grants the reader the opportunity for a depth of examination that may elude many in other forms of media. When violence or chaos is depicted in other media, the focus is usually on the outcome. Handheld books give young readers time to explore the thoughts, feelings, and various possible reactions of youth like themselves. A handheld book is also convenient, "user-friendly"; it has a built-in portability and availability that no other medium can match. Literary handheld books provide youth with a model of good writing and sound information, often selected through a careful editing and review process; they help young people develop judgment and set standards that can be applied to other types of resources.

One Digital Day (1998) provides an example of a book/technology partnership. It is a handheld book that gives us a compelling, comprehensive, cumulative view of the impact of technology in every corner of the earth, showing that it is impossible to escape the fifteen billion microchips at work in our "digital world." A part of Rick Smolan's Day in the Life series of oversized books, for which one hundred of the world's top photographers are dispatched to take photos on a theme during the twenty-four hours of one day, this compendium of stunning scenes features a nine-year-old boy on its cover.

WHY RADICAL CHANGE?
Insistence on the importance of the handheld book, however, should not be interpreted as a Luddite reaction. This book does not lament the digital world, but celebrates it. It does not suggest competition between books and digital media, but partnership. It does not set up an in-depth examination of handheld books in order to create a dichotomy, but rather to erase one. It does emphatically maintain that handheld books are a viable, fascinating, and challenging choice among many viable, fascinating, and challenging resources for youth. It does say that literature has its own unique place in the life of youth in the digital world, and it seeks to define that place. Whether in college classroom, kindergarten, home, or library, literature for youth is an integral part of our digital world, and I believe it will continue to flourish in and-most importantly-with it.
RESOURCES FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS
Radical Change is a new way of looking at contemporary literature for children and young adults. It is needed to help us understand how books are changing in step with positive changes in the digital world. It is a holistic theory made up of numerous related parts. It is a new critical approach which proposes that connectivity, interactivity, and access in the digital world explain the fundamental changes taking place in the body of literature for young readers. It provides the vocabulary and concepts needed to describe a new paradigm. It is a literary theory or framework that has been proposed principally to explain and examine contemporary literature for youth as it exists in the digital age.

Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. London: J. Francis, 1865.

Macaulay, David. Black and White. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.

___. The Way Things Work. Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
PROFESSIONAL RESOURCES
___. The Way Things Work. DK, 1994 (CD-ROM).

Gates, Bill. The Road Ahead. New York: Random House, 1995.

McGillis, Roderick. The Nimble Reader: Literary Theory and Children's Literature. New York: Twayne, 1996.

McLuhan, Marshal I. Culture Is Our Business. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979.

___. The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. New York: Vanguard, 1951.

___. The Medium Is the Massage. New York: Bantam, 1967.

___. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964, 1994.

Negroponte, Nicholas. Being Digital. New York: Knopf, 1995.

Neill, Sam. "Books and Marshall McLuhan." Library Quarterly 41, no. 4 (October 1971).

Roback, Diane E,. and Shannon Maugham. "Children's Business Survey: Playing on Strengths." Publishers Weekly 243 (June 3, 1996).

Smolan, Rick. One Digital Day: How the Microchip Is Changing Our World. New York: Time Books, 1998.

Stoll, Clifford. Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway. New York: Doubleday, 1995.

Tapscott, Don. Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997.

Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Wolf, Gary. " The Wisdom of Saint Marshall, the Holy Fool." Wired (January 1996).

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Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age

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Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age (Dresang, 1999) is a landmark work that examines ways in which young readers are affected by the Digital Age. The impetus for the book grew out of Eliza Dresang's observation that printed books with nonlinear, interactive qualities appeal strongly to contemporary children.

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Dresang noted that, "digital media have served as a catalyst leading to new styles of printed books with graphics in new forms and formats, nonsequential organization, and multiple layers of meaning." This gives a deeper thought into the radical change theory and how it relates to today's world.

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Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age (Dresang, 1999) is a landmark work that examines ways in which young readers are affected by the Digital Age. The impetus for the book grew out of Eliza Dresang's observation that printed books with nonlinear, interactive qualities appeal strongly to contemporary children. She noted that digital media have served as a catalyst leading to new styles of printed books with graphics in new forms and formats, nonsequential organization, and multiple layers of meaning.

Documentation of this generational shift is the foundation of the book. Printed books and reader's reactions to these books are affected by the Digital Age. Social networking on the Internet is evolving rapidly. Youth are spending increasing amounts of time in conversations with others in this nonlinear, hyperlinked environment. Dresang observed that this has influenced the way in which youth read and interact with printed books.

Radical Change and its thesis are well known among school librarians. It likely appeals to librarians because it provides an explanation for the changes in the reading habits of youth that they have observed.

The second reason for republication to make it accessible to a broader audience that extends beyond librarians. Librarians and educational technology specialists are affected by many of the technological and social events occurring outside of schools. Each group can contribute different perspectives about the implications. Radical Change provides common ground for this conversation.

The CITE Journal is a nexus that encompasses science educators, mathematics educators, English educators, and social studies educators in conversation with educational technology specialists. No group has been more affected by advances in technology than librarians, so we are pleased to have the opportunity to incorporate their perspective into the dialog about teacher preparation.

Future teachers need to be aware of the changes in young readers that are occurring in order to meet their needs. Radical Change offers an excellent starting point and context for thinking about implications for teaching in today's schools.

We also encourage you to read Dresang's contemporary reflection piece on Radical Change, published in CITE Journal as a related article.

Glen Bull & Lynn Bell
Editors

Preface and Chapter 1 excerpted from
Dresang, E. T. (1999). Radical change: Books for youth in a digital age. New York: H. W. Wilson. Copyright 1999. Reprinted with permission from the author.

Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age

Eliza T. Dresang

PREFACE

The headings in this Preface-as throughout the book-are designed to serve as guideposts for the reader to use in deciding which topics to pursue.

The Intended Audience

This book is written for librarians and elementary and secondary teachers and for university educators who teach about and study books for youth. Parents who are "growing up digital" with their children are another of its potential audiences. It most likely will be of interest, as well, to scholars in childhood studies programs, many of which have been recently established in universities across America, and to other researchers who are in the forefront of studying (and caring about) the relationship between the digital world and children. I also wrote this book for the many authors, illustrators, designers, editors, and publishers who have demonstrated a commitment to books that have particular digital-age relevancy-and hope all in the publishing trade, including publishers of digital products, will find it provocative. Those are the specific intended audiences. The general audience consists of all those who care about children, their books, and the excitement of the digital environment. (Maybe even a few radical young readers will enjoy dipping in here and there.)

The Nature of the Beast

Radical Change is a way of understanding books that can be used by anyone interested in literature for youth-used to identify books with characteristics reflecting the interactivity, connectivity, and access of the digital world. Its relevance is not confined to the products of the digital age, however. It is a theory that can be applied to books for youth published in any time period, because digital-age characteristics existed both in society and in literature even before they became as commonplace as they are today.

Although literature with these traits may be regarded as either negative or positive for youth, I regard the type of literature singled out by Radical Change (and the underlying societal supports for it) as cause for optimism. I bring four basic assumptions that codify the positive aspects of the digital world and the opportunities for young people in it to this study of literature identified by Radical Change (see page xxiv).

An affirmative regard for Radical Change resources rests in part on a belief that the principles of intellectual freedom (based on the First Amendment) are applicable to youth as well as to adults. There are many who see their mission in life as "protecting the innocence of youth" by limiting their access to information. Even if one does not believe philosophically in access for children, the futility of attempting to shield youth from information seems apparent as we read and hear and view daily reports of atrocities in the news. I am not naive enough, having worked with children much of my professional life and having mothered three, to think that the abundance of information in the digital world and concomitantly in literature for youth is the answer to all the world's ills. Nor am I naive enough not to recognize its dangers. But the danger of withholding information from youth far exceeds the danger of providing it. The onus is on us, the adults who care for and work with young people, to guide them to it, give them the background to sort through it and interpret it, and write, edit, and publish it in books that give them the opportunity to reflect upon and absorb it. A group of graduate students in a course on Radical Change at Florida State pointed out that the antiseptic world described in The Giver (Lowry, 1994) is the antithesis of the exciting, challenging-if not so safe-world of Radical Change.

On the other hand, I make it abundantly clear throughout this book that my enthusiasm for Radical Change books in no way disparages the other, vast majority of good books for youth. My belief in Radical Change is linked to my belief in access to many different kinds of experiences, including those encountered in more traditionally presented books for youth. And besides, as mentioned below, the radical soon becomes the regular. (To youth the radical is already the regular.)

Although I'm writing about books and find many of life's greatest pleasures there, I am not among those who deplore the virtual world. For me online digital resources are the answer to my lifelong need to have a vast amount of information at my fingertips and to explore freely many topics, some of which I can only discover by browsing. On any typical day while writing this book, I would move readily back and forth from my word processor to Web sites with related information, statistical sources, e-mail from colleagues, online bookstores, and library catalogs. But such fantastic digital resources do not keep me from the library, nor from the handheld book. I value exploration among selected passages in books; I like the chance to study and absorb a subject in depth that the handheld book provides. I want children to have this same freedom to explore information openly in all areas. And book and digital resources are not antithetical for me-nor will they be for the twentyfirst-century child.

There is a threat to the handheld book for youth in this digital world. It's not that the handheld book will disappear; it may come to us in a different form or by a different distribution method, but it will always exist. The danger is rather that the "protect the innocent children" forces will win out in the world of handheld books. And if they do, the contents of books will become largely irrelevant to youth-or relevant only as light entertainment. Because in the digital world, no matter how hard the adults try, information will not be kept from the young. And, as has already begun to happen, books-both fiction and nonfiction-must provide the same relevance and opportunities for exploration found in the online world, or they will indeed become relics on the trash heap.

The Roots of Radical Change

As I explain more fully in Chapter 1, the development of the concept Radical Change began nine years ago with a single book- Black and White by David Macaulay (1990)-and a single individual: Kate McClelland, Assistant Director and Head of Children's Services at Perrot Memorial Library in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, soon became an inspired collaborator. She and together and individually, have taken Radical Change "on the road" for the past six years, including appearances at three national conferences devoted specifically to the topic. I have taught graduate courses about Radical Change and have written articles about it for numerous journals with diverse audiences, e.g., CHLA Quarterly, Book Links, Library Trends, Theory into Practice, and The Horn Book. In all these arenas, the concepts in this book were tried tested, refined-and sometimes radically changed. But the fundamental theory has never given way under this scrutiny-it has only gained strength as time has gone on.

Perry Nodelman, Professor of English at the University of Winnipeg, children's literature critic, and himself the author of several novels for youth, inspired much of the intellectual muscle behind this book; you will find his name appearing time and again. The depth and acuity of his analyses and his concern for the children who read books have challenged and inspired me be as a scholar and as a teacher.

One day in 1996, after I had moved to Florida from Wisconsin and my two decade-long job directing the library, media, and technology program in the Madison School District, I noticed in the e-mail signature file of one of my new faculty colleagues, Kathleen Burnett (now Associate Dean), the following quote:

Yet clearly, human thought processes include nonlinear, nonsequential, and interactive characteristics which, when acknowledged by traditional information structures, are not supported. In fact, one might characterize the history of information transfer as a tyranny again such characteristics, that is a tyranny against the rhizome.

Kathy Burnett's image of a rhizome-a horizontal, root-like structure with sprouts here, there and everywhere (first used by French thinkers Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in the 1980s to describe an ideal book)-seemed to me the perfect analogy for Radical Change. I liked its suggestion of organic growth rather than rigid, hierarchical structure. Although I mention the image of a rhizome only briefly in this book, it has been constantly in my mind as the structure that explains the way the changes in literature in youth "sprout up" here and there just as they do in the online environment-connected yet heterogeneous, and in a nonlinear manner. One reason for proposing Radical Change to others is to offset a "tyranny against the rhizome" in literature for youth.

Finally, an opportunity offered by Marc Aronson, Senior Editor at Henry Holt, to read the manuscript of his fine nonfiction book for youth, Art Attack: A Short Cultural History of the Avant-Garde (1998), honed my thinking about Radical Change. Seeing the avant-garde described as first challenging the status quo, then becoming mainstream, reinforced my notion that a thing is radical in the sense of "provocative" for only a short period of time. After that, other meanings of radical, such as "fundamental" or "deep-rooted," take over. This strengthened my belief that the extraordinary changes we were seeing in literature for youth are here to stay.

A Journey Through the Book

The format of this book was inspired by Richard Wurman's Information Anxiety (1989). His book gave me the first comprehensive view of how form and format can enhance understanding while substantially reducing anxiety. It is my hope that the format of this book will allow you, the reader, to pick and choose, to see what is considered "core" to the argument. The annotated Table of Contents is the first guide for the reader. After Chapter 1: What Is Radical Change: An Introduction, Chapter 2 delineates the characteristics of books so identified. Chapter 3 focuses on digital-age youth and how the way they think and learn often leads them to prefer radically changed literature. Chapters 4 through 9 provide an in-depth exploration of the types of Radical Change. Chapter 10 focuses on how the sense of story has changed and yet remains the same in the digital world. Chapter 11 responds to the question, "What is a good book in the digital age?"

Throughout the book, border information relates to the adjacent text, providing ready reference and (hopefully) added value to the discussion. Another part of the book that will serve as a useful reference guide for readers is Appendix A, a compilation of more than two hundred books annotated to highlight their qualities of Radical Change. I've tried to represent all the characteristics of Radical Change through the books in this list (which, of course, had to be highly selective). Delving into these books is perhaps the best way to verify for yourself the existence of books with Radical Change characteristics-and to learn how to recognize them in the future. From this Appendix the trail leads to the digital world and to the Radical Change Web site at

I will update the Appendix frequently on this Web site. In addition, the site will provide a forum for discussion of Radical Change principles and for links to up-to-date, related Web sites as they become apparent. Thus, this Appendix will be the part of this book that is continuously updated, yet it will also continue to serve as the basis for understanding Radical Change. Appendixes B and C are tables, the one showing changing attitudes to childhood in western society, and the other showing the expansion of Radical Change literature among books singled out for honors. Appendix D provides some suggestions for the use of Radical-Change books; Appendix E lists some Frequently Asked Questions about Radical Change-and directs the reader to the Radical Change Web site, where responses can be found and more such questions posed.

The Future of Radical Change

It must be recognized from the start that this book is about theory development. It represents scholarship that comes from much reading, thinking, observing, and analyzing, tempered by a lifelong association with others interested in the study of literature for youth, and with children, books, and (since it has been available) the digital world. It comes from trying out new paradigms, as Joel Barker suggests in his Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future (1992). It is a book based upon intellectual analysis. From the perspective of Information Studies, it fits into the area of intellectual access to information. I will continue to apply the Radical Change theory to literature, looking for new types of interactivity, connectivity, and access in books for youth, past and present.

But I am interested also in pursuing Radical Change using other research methodologies. With one faculty colleague, Myke Gluck, I hope to follow the trail of information-seeking behavior which I set out on some years ago with my dissertation and test the "usability" of books reflecting Radical Change principles. I have begun to develop a sense of the ways in which Radical Change may be particularly relevant to youth who have previously been denied access to information, and want particularly to test these observations. In other directions, I hope to look formally at the language of discourse, to compare, in content analyses, books that do not have the characteristics of Radical Change with that do, to more clearly understand the difference. I also want to study Radical Change from the point of view of the diffusion of information to see how librarians, teachers, parents, and children are learning about, adopting, and using the books of Radical Change. I have started this research with a federally-funded Institute held at FSU in 1998. In the future I hope to collect data to expand upon and extend the usefulness of the ideas in this book.

Currently I am co-authoring a book called Dealing with Censorship in the 21st Century: A Guide for Librarians and Teachers (Greenwood, forthcoming). The topic is relevant to the survival of Radical Change literature. I hope to continue discussions with academic and professional colleagues in person and via the Radical Change Web site, as such discussions have proved invaluable in the past. Above all else, I hope to continue to talk with young readers about their books.

Radical Change has created an extended community of adults and children talking and thinking together-this is the best that the future can hold.

-Eliza T. Dresang
November 1998

WARNING
This book appears to contain a number of stories that do not necessarily occur at the same time. Then again, it may contain only one story. In any event, careful inspection of both words and pictures is recommended. (Macaulay, Black and White, 1990, title page)

This book grew out of a puzzle. The idea that something radical is taking place in children's books first occurred to me when I was a member of the 1991 Caldecott Committee. This Committee awarded the medal for the best picture book of the year to David Macaulay's Black and White (1990). After excitement over the award died down, I began to wonder why Black and White appealed so strongly to contemporary children but not always to contemporary adults. Like the book itself, the reaction to it seemed a puzzle. Looking around, I discovered other books that evoked the same sort of mixed response. Like Black and White, these books invariably had interactive, nonlinear qualities. The words interactive and non linear struck a familiar chord. These are words heard often in contemporary society; they are used to describe digital media such as CD-ROMs and the Internet.

David Macaulay explained
a lot about the "radical" or unusual nature of Black and White in his Caldecott Medal Acceptance speech, when he said that "it is essential to see, not merely to look; that words and pictures can support each other; that it isn't necessary to think in a straight line to make sense; and finally that risk can be rewarded" (1991, p. 346).

My Caldecott colleague, Kate McClelland, and I began to give talks for other librarians and teachers about this book-digital connection. As we talked we learned. We began to recognize other changes in books-not just in formats, but in perspectives and in topics, and not just in picture books, but in all types of books. Eventually we realized that the changes in books for young people have a lot to do with changes in society, a society that daily becomes more interactive and connected through digital networks. We began to see more and more similarities between this world and the world of literature. We saw that something was happening in books for youth, and we called it "Radical Change."

After one of our first public presentations about Radical Change, a librarian came up to the podium to say, "You've saved my life. I have to appear before my school board next Tuesday and convince them why we need funds for both books and computers. I could not quite see the connection until I heard you talk. Now I know exactly what I'm going to say." Many more librarians, educators, critics, parents, and young people themselves have grown excited by this new way of thinking about literature and literary-digital connections. They say the concept of Radical Change helps them understand, select, and use books in this digital age, and they have asked to have it all written down to use as a guide. It was for this reason that Radical Change, an idea about books, became a book itself.

Change needs no definition. Radical Change does. Understanding the various meanings of radical helps in understanding the extensive changes in contemporary literature for youth.

The English word radical derives from the Latin radix, meaning "root." I think of the entire body of existing literature for youth as a sort of rhizome (a horizontal, root-like structure), from which new developments emerge in a random, spontaneous manner.

Next, the word radical means "fundamental." The changes in literature for youth are basic.

The term radical often describes extreme or insurgent actions in times of political turmoil. Literary critic Rod McGillis asks in The Nimble Reader (1996) whether radically-styled contemporary books for youth are "in any political sense radical, or do they put to rest the transgressive instincts of their readers?" (pp. 111-12).

The word radical also means "a departure from the usual or traditional." All changes identified as Radical emerge out of, but at the same time depart from, the time-honored characteristics of literature for youth. Some teachers, librarians, and critics are upset when they see such changes referred to as "new" or "departures," because they can think of books with many of the same traits that were published in the past. These adults are often less disturbed when they realize that the literary changes which depart from the traditional may well have appeared in the past, but not in significant numbers. Now they appear in far greater quantities. What was highly unusual is now commonplace, in part because of a more supportive environment.

Finally, the word radical means "extremely different from commonly existing views." Most changes in literature for youth are not extreme. Nonetheless, a few of the examples described in this book do represent developments that are "extremely different" from the literature of the past.

Considering all these definitions together, Radical Change means fundamental change, departing from the usual or traditional in literature for youth, although still related to it. According to an ancient Chinese proverb, wisdom begins when things are called by their right names. Radical Change gives those of us with a serious interest in contemporary literature for youth the right name to apply to what otherwise would remain an enigma.

"Radical change" is used in two different ways throughout this book, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1
KEY

The term Radical Change with initial caps is used to describe the framework or theory that allows the reader to identify literature with characteristics of the digital age.

The term radical change with no capitals is used to refer to the evidence of the changes themselves in literature or (sometimes) in society.

DOES RADICAL CHANGE APPLY TO ALL BOOKS FOR YOUTH?
Radical Change can apply to all types of books for youth. However, in this book it will be applied only to texts that are generally regarded as "literature" for children or young adults.

Overall, the annual children's Book Selling Survey conducted in March 1996 showed steady sales of children's books. Over 34 percent of the respondents increased their children's book sales over the previous year, while 31.5 percent reported no change (Roback and Maughan, 1996, p. 52). Children's Books in Print (1998) lists more than 127,000 active titles.

WHO ARE THE YOUTH?
When books for children change, it follows that parents, teachers, and others will raise concerns and questions about what this means for reading. Reading in relation to Radical Change means "decoding" words and pictures to arrive at meaning. Evolving ideas and issues about reader response and constructing "story" now and in the future are scrutinized as part of the discussion.

A good friend in publishing recently asked me to guess the age that editors "always" say intended readers are, when they want to sell a book to an editorial committee. The answer (which I did not know) is eight to twelve. Whether or not this practice is widespread, setting age limits is imprecise at best and often unduly restrictive.

The only type of literary
books for youth which seem
thus far not to have been
influenced in a substantial
way by the radical changes
of the digital age are those
known as "easy readers."
Perhaps publishers and
authors believe that
children need linear text,
simplified concepts, and
familiar subjects in order
to learn to read.

WHAT IS THE DIGITAL AGE?
The readers (or listeners and viewers) with whom this book is concerned range from preschool through adolescence, and include as well any other readers who choose materials published and marketed specifically for young people. The specific age of young readers is rarely referred to in this book, and when age is mentioned, it is usually the age intended by the author or illustrator, rather than the age of the actual reader. These readers are the young people Don Tapscott calls the Net Generation in his book Growing Up Digital (1996). They were born after 1977. They have grown up with televisions and computers. Indeed, computers have become more evident and available each year of their lives.

The digital age referred to in this book is the societal landscape that has gradually emerged as computers have become more commonplace and as the Internet has become a locale where children can learn and play. The digital age was clearly emerging in the 1990s, the years that are the focus of this book. No specific beginning date can be identified, for this era, like the books it has influenced, evolved over time, out of what came before. Digital refers not only to the media themselves but also to the interactive, connective qualities they possess, which seem to have permeated much of society. Nicholas Negroponte, head of the MIT Media Lab, vividly describes the impact of this digital culture in the collection of his columns from Wired Magazine called Being Digital (1995): "Being digital is different. We are not waiting on any invention. It is here. It is now. It is almost genetic in its nature, in that each generation will become more digital than the preceding one" (p. 231).
What Does Digital Mean?

In 1997 the Children's
Book Council (CBC), an
organization of publishers
of books and book-related
multimedia products for
youth, compiled a bibliography, Not Just for ChildrenAnymore. It is stated in the
Preface that "children's
books are now books for the
young and the older. One
thing is certain: they are
Not Just for Children
Anymore!" The pamphlet is
available in electronic form
on the CBC web site < http://www.cbcbooks.org/navigation/parindex/htm>.

Digital is a term that is often used when referring to electronic media in the 1990s. There are technical and cultural aspects to its meaning. Technically, digital means media that are created using bytes made up of bits. A bit is a binary unit which is created by the presence or absence of an electrical impulse, in essence a 1 or a 0, thus the name digital. The significance for us is that, because bits and bytes are really only electrical impulses without substantial being, they cannot be fixed into place or frozen in a linear order-they can be endlessly and instantly arranged and rearranged. The electrical impulses of which bytes are composed can speed around the world in seconds-and become something entirely different within a few moments of their arrival at a destination. (In a pre-digital medium, the smallest units of matter-the atoms-once set in place, stay in that order. Print, radio, and television-as originally conceived and transmitted-are pre-digital, linear media.) In a broad sense, digital refers to media which provide for users a high level of choice and interactivity because the bits and bytes can be rearranged and transmitted so easily.

1960s

Television becomes widely available; the global village begins

1970s

Internet precursor comes into use

1980s

Personal computers and digital media become widely available; video games bring digital media to youth

1990s

Internet becomes widely available; "older" electronic media such as television become digitized; technologies converge

In 1997, 44 percent of
all U.S. households had
personal computers. But
an astonishing 60 percent
of the households with
children had them.
Predictions are that by
the year 2000, nearly half
the households with
children will be online
(Tapscott, 1997, p. 22-23).
Network Wizards, an online
source which provides
statistics on worldwide
connectivity, can be found
at < http://www.nw.com/>.

DIGITAL-AGE PROPHET
The digital age acknowledges the continued influence of other electronic media, but the focus is on the spreading network of interconnected personal computers. This is the age of the Internet, the Information Superhighway, the National Information Infrastructure. It is the age of digitized media, often in multimedia format. While there are certainly downsides and pitfalls, the more positive, nurturing, challenging aspects of this digital age can unleash the potential of all of us-and, most importantly, children.

"The medium is the message." "The global village." "Hot and cool media." These are all common phrases coined by Marshall McLuhan. Thirty-some years ago, McLuhan wrote extensively and passionately about the electronic environment. Although his ideas were often speculative rather than "proven," and criticized as such, they've been persistently discussed during thirty years of immense social, technological, and political change. Many of McLuhan's concepts seem more relevant than ever. Recognizing his continued influence, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently reissued his book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, originally published in 1964.
The Global Village

The impact of the emerging
electronic age gained
widespread attention during the sixties with
Marshall McLuhan's The Medium Is the Massage (1967). This was McLuhan's
only best-seller, and it
brought is ideas to the
general public. At his death
in 1980, McLuhan was not
particularly respected as
academician or spokesperson for popular culture. But,
says Gary Wolf, executive
editor of HotWired, "in the
confusion of the digital
revolution, McLuhan is
relevant again"
(1996, p. 124).

Over and over McLuhan proposes that the electronic media are breaking down old habits of thought formed by the impact of Gutenberg and the printing press. The isolationist, nationalistic organization of the world will also be broken down, he says, as people begin to communicate via media that are involving and nonhierarchical. Even more than McLuhan imagined, the global community not only exists, but is increasingly interactive.

Hot and Cool Media
McLuhan and Books
Luhan described media as either "hot," or not requiring active participation on the part of the recipient of the message, or "cool," requiring a high degree of participation. According to McLuhan, a hot" medium is one that is filled with the data the user needs for garnering the message. Often it calls into play only one of the five senses. Radio is a "hot" medium. So are handheld books-they marshal information and narrow the field of choice for the reader. Television, on the other hand, is a "cool" medium. It brings into play at least two senses and necessitates more extensive user involvement. Although McLuhan's examples can be challenged, he saw beyond the limitations of a one-way broadcast and defined a desirable, evolving principle of the new media: interactivity.

McLuhan did not abandon books. He suggested transforming them. He transformed the books he himself wrote in precisely the same ways and for the same reasons that handheld books for youth are being transformed now. McLuhan spoke of one of the concepts of Radical Change, the interaction between print and electronic media, when he said, "Our job is not to wreck the book but save it by teaching grammars of new media" (quoted in Neill, 1971, p. 311). McLuhan said television was a "cool" medium because it is composed of "bits" which make up a mosaic-predicting the mosaic of the digital world, before it came into being. According to Sam Neill, a librarian who has studied McLuhan's work,

The effect of the mosaic approach ... evident in his publications, has naturally caused great howls to arise from those who expect the argument of a man's point of view to march forward word by word, page by page, chapter by chapter, each one rising out of and developing the preceding, to culminate in a visible and classifiable conclusion. He is accused of being a "communicator who can't communicate." (p. 312)

This imaginary dialogue between two contemporary children and their aunt, a McLuhan fan, is meant to show which of
McLuhan's ideas seem valid at the beginning of the 21st century and which need rethinking. Black and White (1990) by David Macaulay is discussed extensively in subsequent chapters. It is a prototype of Radical Change.

Radical Change in Literature for Youth and McLuhan's Ideas
McLuhan uses three juxtaposed formats in The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1951) -advertisements, short witty quotations and statements, and an essay about advertising's cultural relevance. In the introduction to the volume he states, "Because of the circulating point of view in this book, there is no need for it to be read in any special order" (p. vi). In other books, McLuhan used alternating light and boldface type to make points; he published almost entirely visual texts, including The Medium Is the Massage (1967); and he foresaw the hypertext story and the sound bites of modern news reports in Culture Is Our Business (1979), where he said, "In the electric age the connection in narrative and art is omitted.... There is no story line in modern art or news.... Thus, isolated news items are more interesting than editorials" (p. 112). McLuhan employed many other nonlinear, nonsequential techniques in his writing - all of which he described as communication reflecting the electronic world. McLuhan was an accurate prophet for the radical changes to come three decades later to the handheld book for youth.

Nell:
Look, Aunt Rosa, I'm reading a good book by David Macaulay called Black and White.

Aunt Rosa:
Ahhh! Then you have what a man named Marshall McLuhan referred to some thirty years ago as a "hot" medium, something that doesn't require the kind of intense involvement that television viewing or using your computer does. Professor McLuhan thought printed books -other than those he wrote himself -provide a pretty complete and straightforward experience. He compared them to the "mosaic" of electronic media that demand more thought.

Willie:
Have you seen this book? Here, look at it. Look at this, look at the different sizes and shapes of the words, and where they are on this page.

Nell:
Looks like more of a mosaic of items than I see online. And, look, here on the first page, the author won't even tell us how many stories there are in the book. The reader has to figure it out. It's pretty involving. [See Plate 1.]

Aunt Rosa:
Yes. Very unusual, though, for a book. Things happening simultaneously, nonlinearly. Very unusual. I do remember Professor McLuhan's saying that Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland foreshadowed the electronic media with his treatment of time and space. And he talked about what is "left out" for the reader to supply in comics. And he wrote books to show how it could happen. Haven't seen so much of that in good literature for youth-but looks like you have an example here.
What's that on your computer screen?

Nell:
That's an electronic book, a CD-ROM or digital version of David Macaulay's The Way Things Work (1988).

Willie:
See all the graphics that I can click on to get more information? Some of it will be words, some pictures, some video, some audio.

Nell:
Maybe that's what your professor meant by being involved, by a mosaic of media. I can click on my mouse and link from one idea to another. But I have to do the same kind of thinking and can do the same kind of linking of ideas with Black and White.

Aunt Rosa:
A handheld book that demands a large amount of reader interactivity and can be read nonlinearly? An electronic device consisting of linked print, pictures, video, and sound? Ahhh! Perhaps we've reached the kind of combined and compatible communication McLuhan hoped for but did not see. I'll have to think about this....

McLuhan did not use the words Radical Change, but he described a fundamental alteration in life, extremely different from commonly existing views, brought about by new media and potentially transforming books. He did not use children as his primary examples, but exempted no one from the developments he predicted.
More Than Thirty Years Later

A rereading of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland brings a new appreciation of Lewis Carroll's genius and his understanding of children's thought processes. The full text from Project Gutenberg is available on the World Wide Web at <http://www.promo.net/pg/titles/A.html>.

More than thirty years after McLuhan's ideas were introduced, a digital age has emerged, changing our environment dramatically. The computer has become a common household and classroom tool. And the concept of the computer as a "box for manipulating data" has given way to the idea of the computer as a device for communicating data across geographical and political boundaries. Using a computer once required the skills of a professional programmer. Today a preschool child can perform a rich variety of computer operations even before she learns to read.

Nicholas Negroponte emphasizes again and again that "computing is not about computers any more. It is about living" (1995, p. 8). The digital environment is ubiquitous; it cannot be avoided. All forms of information-voice, video, and data-have begun to move around not in linear streams, as with previous media, but rather in bits that are nonsequential and rearrangeable. The new technology, Negroponte says, has created a cultural gap between the generations. Referencing two digital media, CD-ROMs and the Internet, he explains that "one is an electronic book, the other a socializing medium. Both are being taken for granted by children the same way adults don't think about air" (p. 6).

In 1995 a number of books were published that incorporate a wide range of views about the digital world. Being Digital (1995) by Nicholas Negroponte lauds it, while Silicon Snake Oil (1995) by Clifford Stoll finds fault with it. Adding another optimistic(though hardly disinterested) voice to the fray is the Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft Corporation, Bill Gates, with The Road Ahead (1995). The social psychologist Sherry Turkle's Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (1995) examines the effect of the digital world on the individual's sense of identity.

CONNECTIVITY, INTERACTIVITY, AND ACCESS
As do many others, Negroponte believes the Internet is the great agent for change that will usher in McLuhan's global society. He predicts that one billion people will be connected by the year 2000. The epilogue of Negroponte's book is subtitled "An Age of Optimism." His parting comments bring the digital age back to youth: "The control bits of that digital future are more than ever before in the hands of the young. Nothing could make me happier" (p. 231).

Three digital-age concepts underpin and permeate all the radical changes that are taking place in literature for youth: connectivity, interactivity, and access. The librarian who had to explain to her school board that children needed books and computers, often for the same reasons, had recognized this fundamental change in books, but had no way to describe it to others until she heard about Radical Change.

Connectivity refers to the connections that readers make with hypertext-like links, both visual and mental, prompted by the changing forms and formats of handheld books. It also refers to the increased sense of community that these new books bring-both because of the sharing of story among readers that the formats and subjects encourage (sharing that Nell and Willie were experiencing) and because of the new perspectives and vistas with which young readers connect.

Interactivity refers also to both reader and book. The changing formats of books enable a more active, involved reading. All books require active readers-that is, readers must construe meaning and interpret the text, regardless of format. But some books seem to expect readers to react in one particular way while others seem more willing to encourage a wide range of differing responses. Digital-age readers interact with these books by making decisions as they read; they may approach the text in various nonlinear or nonsequential ways that the author does not determine in advance. Readers not only interact with the visual format but may interact with the context by mentally exploring levels of meaning or plateaus of story. The young reader may be encouraged to create or expand portions of the story, most commonly the ending.
WHY HANDHELD BOOKS?
Access refers to the breaking of long-standing barriers in literature for youth-barriers that blocked off certain topics, certain kinds of characters, certain styles of language. Methods of disseminating information more broadly have proliferated since the invention of the printing press. But dissemination of information does not always translate into access to information, especially where children are concerned-the benefits of dissemination have never been as clear for children as they have for adults. However, access to a wide diversity of opinion and perspective has now become possible in the digital world and is beginning to be reflected in children's books, both in a broader range of topics and in the manner in which fictional characters react to the problems presented. Increased intellectual access sometimes provokes in adults the impulse to raise more barriers-possibly a futile effort in the digital world.

If digital media provide a merger of print, video, audio, and graphic components in a dazzling array, why have handheld books at all? Reading a handheld book provides a pleasurable, aesthetic experience both like and not like that of reading print on a screen or experiencing multimedia in a digital format, even when the book and the digital medium have similar characteristics. Much of this book explores the similarities of these experiences rather than the differences. However, books have certain unique advantages. The handheld book provides the reader with the time to linger and ponder issues that might fly by in digital space. Reading a handheld book grants the reader the opportunity for a depth of examination that may elude many in other forms of media. When violence or chaos is depicted in other media, the focus is usually on the outcome. Handheld books give young readers time to explore the thoughts, feelings, and various possible reactions of youth like themselves. A handheld book is also convenient, "user-friendly"; it has a built-in portability and availability that no other medium can match. Literary handheld books provide youth with a model of good writing and sound information, often selected through a careful editing and review process; they help young people develop judgment and set standards that can be applied to other types of resources.

One Digital Day (1998) provides an example of a book/technology partnership. It is a handheld book that gives us a compelling, comprehensive, cumulative view of the impact of technology in every corner of the earth, showing that it is impossible to escape the fifteen billion microchips at work in our "digital world." A part of Rick Smolan's Day in the Life series of oversized books, for which one hundred of the world's top photographers are dispatched to take photos on a theme during the twenty-four hours of one day, this compendium of stunning scenes features a nine-year-old boy on its cover.

WHY RADICAL CHANGE?
Insistence on the importance of the handheld book, however, should not be interpreted as a Luddite reaction. This book does not lament the digital world, but celebrates it. It does not suggest competition between books and digital media, but partnership. It does not set up an in-depth examination of handheld books in order to create a dichotomy, but rather to erase one. It does emphatically maintain that handheld books are a viable, fascinating, and challenging choice among many viable, fascinating, and challenging resources for youth. It does say that literature has its own unique place in the life of youth in the digital world, and it seeks to define that place. Whether in college classroom, kindergarten, home, or library, literature for youth is an integral part of our digital world, and I believe it will continue to flourish in and-most importantly-with it.
RESOURCES FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS
Radical Change is a new way of looking at contemporary literature for children and young adults. It is needed to help us understand how books are changing in step with positive changes in the digital world. It is a holistic theory made up of numerous related parts. It is a new critical approach which proposes that connectivity, interactivity, and access in the digital world explain the fundamental changes taking place in the body of literature for young readers. It provides the vocabulary and concepts needed to describe a new paradigm. It is a literary theory or framework that has been proposed principally to explain and examine contemporary literature for youth as it exists in the digital age.

Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. London: J. Francis, 1865.

Macaulay, David. Black and White. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.

___. The Way Things Work. Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
PROFESSIONAL RESOURCES
___. The Way Things Work. DK, 1994 (CD-ROM).

Gates, Bill. The Road Ahead. New York: Random House, 1995.

McGillis, Roderick. The Nimble Reader: Literary Theory and Children's Literature. New York: Twayne, 1996.

McLuhan, Marshal I. Culture Is Our Business. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979.

___. The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. New York: Vanguard, 1951.

___. The Medium Is the Massage. New York: Bantam, 1967.

___. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964, 1994.

Negroponte, Nicholas. Being Digital. New York: Knopf, 1995.

Neill, Sam. "Books and Marshall McLuhan." Library Quarterly 41, no. 4 (October 1971).

Roback, Diane E,. and Shannon Maugham. "Children's Business Survey: Playing on Strengths." Publishers Weekly 243 (June 3, 1996).

Smolan, Rick. One Digital Day: How the Microchip Is Changing Our World. New York: Time Books, 1998.

Stoll, Clifford. Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway. New York: Doubleday, 1995.

Tapscott, Don. Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997.

Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Wolf, Gary. " The Wisdom of Saint Marshall, the Holy Fool." Wired (January 1996).

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Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age

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Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age (Dresang, 1999) is a landmark work that examines ways in which young readers are affected by the Digital Age. The impetus for the book grew out of Eliza Dresang's observation that printed books with nonlinear, interactive qualities appeal strongly to contemporary children.

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This theory also means that illustrators and authors are influenced with what they write & design by what time period they are in.

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Radical change, a theory described in my 1999 book, Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age, was developed in the mid-1990s. It serves as a lens through which to examine, explain, and ultimately, use contemporary literature for youth growing up in the Digital Age. It identifies changes in forms and formats, perspectives, and boundaries in this body of literature-all changes related to the interactivity, connectivity, and access of the Digital Age (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Key Definitions

Connectivity refers to connections of hypertext like links in resources, as well as the sense of community or construction of social worlds that emerge from changing perspectives and expanded associations in books and other resources or in relation to resources in the real world.

Interactivity refers to dynamic, nonlinear, nonsequential, complex books and other resources and associated learning and information behaviors.

Access refers to the breaking of longstanding information barriers, bringing entrée to a wide diversity of formerly largely inaccessible opinion and sophistication in books and other resources and related opportunities in society.

When I first conceived the Radical Change theory, almost everyone agreed that digital technologies were changing radically, yet almost no one acknowledged the concomitant change in a growing cadre of printed books for youth. Moreover, those who did take note of the changes in books saw little or no relationship between these alterations and the Digital Age in which they were written, illustrated, and published. Consequently, in discussions of the integration of technology in education, printed books were often either forgotten or treated as a completely different, unrelated entity.

As I prepared this reflection on my book, I realized that Radical Change was then and is still the only theory of which I am aware that makes this connection between printed books for youth and the digital environment.[a] Radical Change is what is known as a spatial/temporal theory, rooted in the belief that authors and illustrators are influenced by the time and place within which they write. Bakhtin noted that "for the purpose of his writing, an author must create entire worlds and, in doing so, is forced to make use of the organizing categories of the real world in which he lives" (Clarkand & Holquist, 1984, p. 278). Radical Change theory fits this tradition. It recognizes that temporal and spatial relationships in the digital world have "resulted in historically manifested narrative forms" (Holquist 1990, p. 113)-in this case interactivity, connectivity, and access in books for youth.

McLuhan (1964/1994) was prescient in describing and modeling how the influence of media (although not digital) could transform a book from a passive to an engaging medium. Landow (2006) was one of the first scholars to see how hypertext embodies Roland Barthes's conception of the "writerly" (more involving) rather than the "readerly" (less involving) text.

The Digital Age principles of interactivity, connectivity, and access that now characterize many books for youth are influenced by digital technologies and have altered the reading experience. Indicators of these principles in books include the following: graphics in new forms and formats; words and pictures reaching new levels of synergy; nonlinear or nonsequential organization and format; multiple layers of meaning from a variety of perspectives; cognitively, emotionally, and physically interactive formats; sophisticated presentations; abundant connections; and unresolved storylines. Manifestations of these and other indicators, however, have matured considerably in the ensuing decade and are continuing to appear in more and more sophisticated forms and formats, promoting more and more active engagement of the user/participant/reader, just as is happening with other dynamic media.

Two issues have been raised fairly often since the publication of Radical Change, so before continuing this reflection, I will address them. Radical Change theory identifies and describes those books with Digital Age characteristics, which have increased and continue to increase annually in number, variety, and sophistication, but which by no means constitute the majority of the 5,000 or so books published for youth each year. The fact that many books do not have these characteristics is one reason that a theory is useful to educators in locating those that do. In addition, although I make the case that these dynamic books hold a special appeal for Net Generation youth, I do not negate the value of more traditional reading experiences; nor do I deny that books with these features have existed prior to the Digital Age. A few authors were quite radical for their times (e.g., Lewis Carroll).

In the remainder of this reflection, I describe some of the more dramatic developments in books and look briefly to the future. Then I discuss the implications of these changes for teacher education and for curricular applications and student learning.
Digital Age Books as a Dynamic Medium
Information Books

More than a decade ago publisher DK, Inc. (now owned by Pearson), was a stand-out innovator in information books for youth. Their books reflected the nonlinear, nonsequential characteristics of digital media. They adopted design characteristics of digital hypertext, presenting pictures and text in juxtaposition that required, or at least promoted, a hypertextual approach to thinking and reading. Peter Kindersley, company founder, set out to demonstrate that visual information is as important as verbal, especially for readers with dyslexia (which Kindersley had encountered in his youth). In the early 1990s, DK books (along with the Cole/Degan Magic School Bus series) were the rare digitally designed information books. Now, this style of organization has become so common place in information books for youth that it is hard to find books that have not adopted it.

Fiction for Older Youth

Virginia Euwer Wolff is an author of fiction whose work clearly changed with the development of the Digital Age. She created her first two books for young adults in the late 1980s in a traditional linear style. However, soon she turned to more radical writing. The first two novels in a planned trilogy, Make Lemonade (1993) and True Believer (2001) were written in the now increasingly common form of free or blank verse. Wolff arranged the words on the page to reflect the emotions and cadence of the teen protagonist.

Other novelists have taken this a step further and arranged the words in their books to form pictures on the page. For example, Hesse (1997) in Out of the Dust arranged words like piano keys during a particularly dramatic event involving piano playing. Numerous poets for youth regularly create words that form pictures (see, e.g., James Stevenson's works).

In 1998 Wolff in Bat 6 pioneered the style of writing with multiple voices and multiple perspectives (22 to be precise). Her technique has since been widely adopted. Other Digital Age forms and formats that have become prevalent include text that is formatted to appear as letters, journal entries, diaries, emails, or instant messages. The Internet is not the only medium where young readers can access multiple presentations, multiple perspectives, and multiple layers of reading choices.

Picture Books for All Ages

Picture books for all ages have incorporated many of the Digital Age changes. In Radical Change, I identified Macaulay's (1990) Black and White as a prototype of this genre. Since then, picture books have incorporated dozens of digitally designed variations, although perhaps none with the timeless sophistication and complexity of Black and White. Varying font size and shapes are exceedingly commonplace - the size of the font along with color may be used to convey emotions, importance, and direction. Often, a remarkable synergy is created between words and pictures. Visual perspectives from numerous points of view (in the past children's books used only midrange perspectives) take the young reader on journeys reminiscent of the movement within video games. Characters exit the story and speak to the reader. Some take control of writing the story (e.g., a cat named Chester in Watt, 2007).

Paper-Engineered Books

Many pop-up books requiring physical interaction are more accurately called "paper engineered" because of the immense artistic talent involved and the complexity of their design. I expressed ambivalence in Radical Change about whether pop-ups were merely toys or serious books influenced by the digital environment. That ambivalence disappeared in the past decade - the literary value of paper-engineered texts goes far beyond toy status.

Sendak, Yorink, and Reinhart's (2006) expertly paper-engineered picturebook, Mommy?, is a 21st century version of Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (1963). Both tell the story of a small child's quest for approval from his mother or for his mother's love. Through engaging with the complex manipulatives, the young reader is actively involved in the protagonist's search. Of course the premise in the Sendak et al. book, mommy as monster, is also a much more sophisticated and ambivalent presentation of the subject content, with an ending left to the imagination of the reader.

Graphic Novels

I find that no change has been more dramatic than that of the graphic novel. McCloud (1993) demonstrated that comics, as a serious medium, demand complex, cognitive, interactive attention from the reader, who must create the part of the story/text that falls in the gutter between panels. My discussion of graphic novels occupied less than two full pages of text in Radical Change, even though they had been around in young adult literature as a serious format for a while. If written today, my discussion of this format would comprise at least one entire chapter, for with the interactivity and graphic dominance of much digital media, this print format has mushroomed. Graphic novels have become a form of print book that appears in all genres of literature for youth, from the Baby Mouse books by Jennifer and Matthew Holm to serious historical nonfiction and multilayered fictional work. Often traditional printed books become movies and video games and vice versa. Now novels are sometimes retold in another print format, the graphic novel-a sign of the format's popularity.

The Dynamic Hybrid Book

One last dramatic Digital Age change in relation to books has occurred since the publication of Radical Change. It is a recent development, not yet widespread, although Kathleen Burnett and I forecasted it in 1999, based on the work of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. For want of a better term, I am referring to it as a dynamic hybrid book. One of the first such hybrid examples I noticed was Cathy's Book (Stewart & Weusnabm, 2006). Phone numbers and Web site addresses are sprinkled throughout the text and must be accessed in order to solve the mystery of a missing boyfriend posed in the book.

A much more grandiose venture is referred to as a multiplatform book by its publisher, Scholastic, Inc.. The book includes trading cards (except in the library edition) that turn into game pieces when a code found on each is entered on a Web site. The next step is participation in an online game that extends over the course of 10 books and will result in the awarding of $100,000 in prizes to a selection of young readers who solve the mystery described in the books. The first book in the series, A Maze of Bones, was issued in September 2008. To fully experience this dynamic book one must move back and forth between digital and print media. Players are also assigned to a team, so it is easy to imagine a huge connected worldwide scramble to read the books and move to the next step of the mystery. The interactivity, connectivity, and access of the digital environment explain why this type of hybrid reading activity will likely succeed. This type of synergy that is growing up between printed books and digital media is another reason that the Digital Age book is a part of technology integration in classroom instruction.

Radical Change Theory and the Future

Radical Change Theory will continue to be useful in predicting the changes in books for youth. Interactivity, connectivity, and access will continue to be the principal driving forces in the digital environment that explain innovations in reading and information resources for youth. The question must be raised, however, as technology advances, whether the content of the book will gradually morph into residence on a handheld digital media device. In Radical Change, I pondered the answer to "why handheld [printed] books?" In my original response, I named the opportunity for a depth of examination of and reflection on ideas, the portability and availability of books, and the careful editing and review process that precedes development of a literary piece for youth. I do not see how any of these characteristics are precluded by the latest versions of portable electronic book readers. The latest versions are far too expensive for general consumption, but assuming they were not, they allow for the reflection, portability, availability (download via Bluetooth), and same careful preview and review process. Electronic paper is close to perfection. The aesthetics of holding a cloth bound book are missing, but a simulation of the experience is getting close.

Already a large number of books for youth are available in e-book format. Many of them require specific handheld readers that will not work with other publishers' books. There are generic readers, but they are still quite expensive and not many digital books for youth are currently available in a compatible format. Of course, there are many multipurpose digital devices such as Palms and smart phones that will accommodate books - there are just not a lot of books for youth available for them yet either. I do believe we are on the verge of a breakthrough with the format.

Certain print book aesthetics would be difficult (but perhaps not possible) to emulate in e-book format. The 2008 Caldecott Award for the most outstanding picture book for children published in the United States was presented to Brian Selznick (2007), author and illustrator of a radical book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. It is hundreds of pages longer than an ordinary picture book. Approximately 300 of its 533 pages are wordless black and white sketches that tell the story, not illustrating the text but replacing it. Selznick noted that he thinks of the book as somewhere between a graphic novel, a picture book, and a film (All About Adolescent Literacy, 2007). Each sequence of drawings can itself become a miniature silent movie if the reader employs a flipbook technique. This latter feature that requires a physical interaction with the book would not be the same in digital form, nor would paper-engineered books or picture books of various shapes and sizes be the same on a handheld digital device.

The International Children's Digital Library (ICDL; see http://www.icdlbooks.org/index.shtml) , however, has successfully retained the original artwork and format of highly visual children's books, which can be read in one of five free online viewers. The ICDL did not exist when Radical Change was published but it will continue to expand in the future, because it is more successful online than on a portable device. As of 2008 this Web site, created by faculty and child consultants at the University of Maryland and sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, Microsoft Foundation, Adobe Systems, Inc., and numerous book publishers, had 2,657 books in 48 languages and had been visited by more than a million people in 166 countries. Are these print books? They are originally print books that have been scanned in with sophisticated digital equipment. This type of digital library will continue to coexist with highly visual books in a format that is independent of a computer for both practice and psychological reasons, but the ICDL enormously increases accessibility to books in many countries and cultures that no U.S. library could possibly afford.

It is likely that-as much of the information formerly provided in books is now mostly in digital form- formats that can be easily transported will be (when economically feasible) and that those that cannot be will remain in print form. This would not discount the usefulness of Radical Change theory in the least, nor the existence of printed books, nor of physical space libraries.

Cross-Disciplinary Implications of Radical Change Research

Radical Change theory was devised to explain books for youth and then expanded to explain youth behavior in relation to digitally designed books and other digital media. The research conducted with Radical Change during the past decade has focused specifically on Digital Age books and related reading behaviors, which, not rooted in any one discipline, has cross-disciplinary implications and cross-media relevance.

Teacher Education

Although almost all teachers now receive some kind of instruction in how to integrate technology into their classroom teaching, few teachers are taught to think of Digital Age characteristics of books that would make good partners with technology. Abele (2003), at Capella University, did a dissertation study titled Responses to Radical Change Children's Books by Preservice Teachers. Her findings were as follows:

The reading attitudes of the preservice teachers were affected positively by the [Radical Change] books, and more time was spent reading for enjoyment. The participants also described a higher level of interaction required by the reader than with more traditional children's books. This interaction was welcomed by the participants and valued as an effective part of future teaching. The results of this study also revealed that reading is a social experience, best shared with others for more pleasurable involvement (Abele, 2003, Abstract)

The results of this research would suggest that preservice teachers can make the link between Digital Age books and the types of experiences that attract students to computers and other technologies and that this link could extend the preservice teachers' ability to connect with Net Generation learners and make their learning more relevant to their lives. New teachers could enter the classroom armed with an additional digital tool. Because Radical Change is a cross-disciplinary theory and because it can be used to identify books in any discipline (200 of them were annotated in Appendix A of Radical Change), its inclusion in technology-related teacher education courses and in reading-related preservice courses, could be beneficial in science, mathemathics, social studies, English, and the humanities.

Cross-Disciplinary Classroom Instruction

The bottom line of the research in this area is that, given a choice, many children will select the books that emulate their preferences in dynamic media and that, despite its less linear and often more sophisticated presentation, they can and do comprehend what is presented. Establishing that children can and do comprehend nonlinear, nonsequential text has been important, as most of the teaching of reading and writing to date has been so firmly linear.

The traditional way of teaching reading has been strictly linear (unless one counts the back and forth children do searching pictures for clues of what the words might mean). Hassett (formerly Hammerberg, 2001), who investigated the reading and writing of early elementary school age children, concluded that, in fact, their natural way of approaching both functions is "hypertextually." After studying texts identified by Radical Change she proposed something she termed "shared and interactive writing" that builds upon children's natural inclinations. Her work suggests that even very young children possess the same affinity for nonlinear design in their books that has been noted in the digital media.

Another researcher, Pantaleo, has firmly established both the affinity and the ability of young children to read, comprehend, and enjoy digitally designed and quite sophisticated print books. Between 2003 and 2008, Pantaleo published 24 articles describing research with elementary school children in first to fifth grades that focused on Digital Age books and their influence on reading and writing, a number of which incorporated Radical Change theory. (See her Web site for a list of these articles: http://www.educ.uvic.ca/Faculty/pantaleo/writing.htm.) All of her research is qualitative, with analysis of both oral transcripts and written responses from the children who participated in a number of different classrooms and schools. Conclusions from four of her studies having cross-disciplinary implications and cross-media relevance can be found in the appendix.

Pantaleo's conclusions are rich in instructional opportunities that stimulate thinking and learning across disciplines and across media. Her work shows that writing often emulates reading. So the study of literary hypertextual writing in books might have a crossover to the plethora of writing online.

One relatively subversive thought is that in schools, where some of the new media most favored by youth are not allowed, the excitement of Radical Change books with Digital Age features might serve as an alternative lure for young learners, or at least they might decrease the disconnect between their outside-of-school and in-school life that exists for many youth.

In her research studies, Pantaleo discussed another Radical Change assumption, that adults and youth are partners in the digital world. Her description of the role of the teacher is one of partner with the children in constructing meaning. She mentioned in one study that when reading the transcript of one of her own classroom discussions she realized she had missed some salient opportunities to foster children's thoughts by talking too much herself.

Two final words on classroom instruction: The same principles of technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge that apply to the use of technology in the classroom should apply to the technology-influenced books, when the books are used to capitalize on their Digital Age characteristics. Finally, Appendix D in Radical Change, "Using Radical Change with Readers" offered some ways to help students recognize and work with Radical Change characteristics in books.

The Synergy of Digital and Print Media

According to Jenkins (2006), we live in a convergence culture, and among the convergences are the old media and the new. In some instances this convergence can reap benefits for all involved. Earlier in this reflection was the example of a convergence of print and Internet use necessary to solve a mystery strung out over 10 books, all by well-known authors for youth, making it more than a game. Another example, mentioned in Radical Change is the online role-playing MOOs (Multi-Object Oriented) and MUSHs (Multiuser Shared Habitats) based on Anne McCaffrey's novels plus various other connected Web sites. (For The Worlds of Anne McCaffrey approved fan web sites see http://annemccaffrey.net/index.php?page_id=21.)

The principles upon which Radical Change is based well explain how this offline/online synergy has grown and developed. The Harry Potter books (the best selling series of print books in the history of children's publishing) precipitated the largest online literary community in Internet history, a community of intense book discussion, role playing, and creative writing. Jenkins (2006) documented this drama in his chapter, "Why Heather Can Write?" (pp. 169-205). The literary communities (noted by Pantaleo as encouraged in a classroom by sharing and discussion of Radical Change books) became a worldwide social network stemming from a print medium. Radical Change predicts even more synergy of media as the Digital Age principles mature. This type of synergy created by shared interactivity, connectivity, and access between the print and digital environments makes all types of media involved dynamic.

Note

[a] Another theoretical explanation for some of the changes identified by Radical Change and applied to books for youth is postmodernism. For a discussion of the similarities and differences between the two, see Dresang (2008).

References

Abele, M. (2003). Responses to Radical Change children's books by preservice teachers (Doctoral dissertation, Capella University, 2003). Retrieved from ProQuest Digital Dissertations. (AAT 3093818)

Burnett, K., & Dresang, E. T. (1999). Rhizomorphic reading: The emergence of a new aesthetic in literature for youth. The Library Quarterly, 69(4), 421-446.

Carr, N. (2008, July/August). "Is Google making us stupid?" Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

Clarkand, K., & Holquist, M. (1984). Mikhail Bakhtin. Cambridge: Harvard University.

Dresang, E. T. (1999). Radical change: Books for youth in a Digital Age. New York: Wilson.

Dresang, E.T. (2008). Radical Change theory, Postmodernism, and contemporary picturebooks. In L.R. Sipe & S. Pantaleo (Eds.), Postmodern picturebooks: Play, parody, and self-referentiality (pp. 41-54). New York: Routledge.

Foehr, U.B. (2006). Media multitasking among American youth: Prevalence, predictors and pairings. Retrieved from the Kaiser Family Foundation Web site: http://www.kff.org/entmedia/7592.cfm

Hesse, K. (1997). Out of the dust. New York: Scholastic.

Holquist, M. (1990). Dialogism: Bakhtin and his world, New York: Routledge.

Landow, G.P. (2006). Hypertext 3.0: Critical theory and new media in an era of globalization. (3rd ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.

Lenhart, A., Madden, M., Macgill, A.R., & Smith A. (2007). Teens and social media: The use of social media gains a greater foothold in teen life as they embrace the conversational nature of interactive online media. Retrieved from the Pew Internet & American Life Web site: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/230/report_display.asp

Macaulay, D. (1990). Black and white. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

McCloud, S. (1993). Understanding comics: The invisible art. Northampton, MA: Tundra.

McLuhan, M. (1994). Understanding media: The extensions of man. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Original work published in 1964).

Pantaleo, S. (2004, October). Young children and Radical Change characteristics in picture books. Reading Teacher, 58, 178-187.

Pantaleo, S. (2005, February). Young children engage with the metafictive in picture books. Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, 28, 19-37.

Pantaleo, S. (2007a, June). Interthinking: Young children using language to think collectively during interactive read-alouds. Early Childhood Education, 34, 439-447.

Pantaleo, S. (2007b, April) Writing texts with Radical Change characteristics. Literacy, 41, 16-25.

Prensky, M. (2001). Do they really think differently?: Digital natives, Digital immigrants, part II. On the Horizon, 9(6), 1-9. Retrieved on August 6, 2008, from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part2.pdf

Rideout, V, Roberts, D.F., & Foehr, U.B. (2005). Executive summary: Generation M: Media in the lives of 8-18 year olds. Retrieved from theKaiser Family Foundation Web site: http://www.kff.org/entmedia/7250.cfm

Sendak, M, Yorinks, A., & Reinhart, M.(2006). Mommy? New York: Michael di Capua Books/Scholastic.

Selznick, B. (2007). The invention of Hugo Cabret. New York: Scholastic Press.

Stewart S., & Weusnabm H. (2006). Cathy's book: If found call 650-266-8233. Jackson, TN: Running Press.

Watt, M. (2007). Chester. Tonawanda, NY: Kids Can Press.

Wolf, M. (2007). Proust and the squid: The story and science of the reading brain. New York: HarperCollins.

Wolff, V. E. (1993). Make lemonade. New York: Holt.

Wolff, V. E. (1998). Bat 6. New York: Scholastic.

Wolff, V. E. (2001). True believer. New York: Atheneum.

Author Note:

Eliza T. Dresang
Eliza Atkins Gleason Professor
Founding Director, Interdisciplinary Center for Leadership, Technology Integration, and Critical Literacies (I-CELTIC)
College of Information
Florida State University
edresang@fsu.edu

Appendix

A Summary of Pantaleo's Research Conclusions

Reading:

Young readers thoroughly enjoyed the books with Digital Age characteristics (Pantaleo, 2004; Pantaleo, 2007a).

Readers make choices as they read and, as is evident in the transcript excerpts, transact with the verbal and visual texts in various nonsequential ways (Pantaleo, 2004; Pantaleo, 2005).

Although readers should always be actively involved in the construction of meaning while reading, Radical Change identified texts require a greater degree of reader participation in the creation of meaning (Pantaleo, 2004; Pantaleo, 2005; Pantaleo, 2007a).

Marked similarities exist between the children's interactions during Radical Change identified books read-aloud sessions and characteristics of what web-based interactions offer, e.g., nonlinear, nonsequential strategies; interactivity with blurring between reader and writer (Pantaleo, 2005).

Connectivity refers to the increased sense of community created by these books, because the forms and formats encourage sharing among readers (Pantaleo, 2004; Pantaleo, 2007a).

Radical Change characteristics give agency to readers (Pantaleo, 2004).

The children's literary understanding about the ways that stories "work" was extended [Comment: Reminiscent of Papert's (2005) admonition that computers can be used to teach children to think about thinking] (Pantaleo, 2004; Pantaleo, 2005).

"Students are immersed in a plurality of texts and educators need to acknowledge and use students' out-of-school experiences with texts that have multiple reading, writing and viewing pathways" (Pantaleo, 2007b, p. 25).

Writing:

Children are socialized into a certain (linear) way to write, but when exposed to other possibilities their own creative products reflect breaking the mold (Pantaleo, 2006; Pantaleo, 2007b).

Writing after exposure to Radical Change texts showed skillful interruptions and disruptions in each narrative (Pantaleo, 2007a).

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Radical Change Revisited: Dynamic Digital Age Books for Youth

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Radical change, a theory described in my 1999 book, Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age, was developed in the mid-1990s. It serves as a lens through which to examine, explain, and ultimately, use contemporary literature for youth growing up in the Digital Age.