Radical Change Revisited: Dynamic Digital Age Books for Youth

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). 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