Ooligan’s Acquisitions workgroup takes publishing into the classroom with the Young Editors Project (YEP), a fun way for kids to read and evaluate young adult manuscripts that are being considered for publication.
The Young Editors Project is just another way to bring publishing into children’s lives. In many of the projects described in Classroom Publishing, Ooligan’s most recent release, kids are encourage to publish their own creations, but evaluating the writing of others can be just as useful in understanding great writing. Ooligan’s YEP allows kids to look at novels and identify the strengths and weaknesses of an author’s story in a situation where their opinion matters.
Sometimes it’s difficult for acquisitions editors to decide whether or not to publish a manuscript they have received – there are so many factors to consider. One factor, of course, is whether the book will appeal to the target audience. Ooligan does publish young adult books, but sometimes we need help deciding whether young adults will really like the manuscript we are considering. For most of us, it’s been over a decade since we were young adults ourselves. And so, we turn to the source for help – we ask young adults to read the manuscripts and give their opinions. The name for this process is the Young Editors Project.
The YEP is very simple: we bring two novels to kids of the appropriate age groups, and after describing to them the publishing process, we allow them to choose which of the two to read, and then explain their role as editors. The publishing process is something that many kids are unfamiliar with, at least in detail. But it’s exciting for them to realize their own significance in the process when they know their comments will really influence Ooligan’s decisions.
Each term, we work with twenty middle-schoolers so that ten kids read each of the two novels. They are given questionnaires specific to each book, and asked to fill them out while providing any other feedback they want. The questions on the sheets are varied, dealing with characters, dialogue, pacing, plot realism, etc. It’s pretty easy for kids to read a book and comprehend the basic plot, but it’s an impressive skill to be able to read and analyze a novel for it’s potential.
The groups are given three to four weeks to read the novels and provide comments, suggestions, criticisms, and praise. Then, editors from Ooligan meet with the groups to collect the questionnaires and get a sense of the overall reactions.
The best part about YEP, for me, is having all so many of my thoughts about a novel validated. If I think a novel moves too slowly to keep a 14 year old’s attention, and then I read in their notes, “This is boring, I wish more was happening in this chapter,” I start to feel like maybe I’m in the right business after all.
But I think the best part about the YEP is that the readers gain such a great understanding of how novels are chosen for publication and they can begin to comprehend their own importance in the publisher/reader relationship. Ooligan only brings novels to the YEP that acquisitions has already read and is seriously considering for publication – to do anything else would be to waste their time. And they like knowing that their decisions make an impact.
