Beyond the Page: Pairing Children’s Literature with Video Games

Abstract

A patron walks in and asks for the latest Minecraft book—luckily a copy was just checked in! Like other media reinforcement books, popular video game books often demand multiple copies and frequent replacements. A satisfied patron might walk out with a target book and a stack of other titles.

But what if the model were flipped, and instead of reinforcing a single franchise, connections among games and books represented the library’s wider book and media collection? We introduce recent narrative video games for tweens, encouraging exploration of themes and topical connections between games and the children’s literature collection.