In addition to all sorts of other cool things to encourage reading, the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress has launched a new project called The Exquisite Corpse Adventure.
For those who don’t know, an exquisite corpse is an old parlor game where sentences or images are collected together from separate collaborators to make a cohesive whole. For example, it could be that one person writes a sentence on a piece of paper and then that paper is passed around the room with each person adding a new sentence until someone finishes the story which is then read aloud.
Jon Scieszka, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, is the impetus behind this particular exquisite corpse. Scieszka has written the first episode and send it on to a series of noted authors and illustrators (including Gregory Maguire, M. T. Anderson, Daniel Handler, Shannon Hale, and many more) who will continue and complete the story. It will be published every two weeks and conclude one year from now.
As Scieszka describes his part: “pieced together out of so many parts that it is not possible to describe them all here, so go ahead and just start reading!”
I agree.
Start reading.
John Klima is the editor of the Hugo Award-winning speculative fiction zine Electric Velocipede.
