Kate Zucco
All kids who grow up in Northeast Ohio know the trembling anticipation of icy winter mornings. In a second, an ordinary school day can become an unplanned holiday .
University of Akron professor of English and published young adult author Julie Drew sums up the feeling of a snow day: “It’s an unexpected gift. And what will you do with it?”
Drew and her two colleagues, Casey Shevlin and Marlia Weisse, are the literate minds behind Snow Day Productions, a new publisher of online content for young people. Their first podcast series, “Akron Adventures,” launched in December. The season one locally inspired, kid-friendly narrative “Bones in the Dark” focuses on a group of tweens who stumble onto a mystery in a neighborhood park when one of them trips on what turns out to be a human bone. The group then sets out to learn who the bone belongs to and discovers a macabre chapter of local history.
Though the name has been changed in the podcast, the setting is Schneider Park in West Akron — a hub for soccer practices and joggers that was once a pauper’s grave associated with the Summit County Infirmary, often referred to as the “Poor House.” The institution was relocated in 1915, and the graveyard was transformed into a green space to anchor the new housing around it.
The series illuminates part of Akron’s history while helping young people, ages 7 to 12, navigate the often tricky social situations of their formative years.
“They’re sponges at that age, and we wanted to put out something that would positively affect who they want to be and how they see themselves and the world around them,” says Shevlin, a research analyst with a Master of Arts in English and a passion for YA literature.
Weisse, an instructional designer and vice president of content for Impresiv Health who also holds a M.A. in English, agrees about the lasting impact fiction can have on a young person. “The decisions the main characters make last with the reader. If it’s done well, you feel like you have gone through that same exact obstacle or challenge or situation. You can’t get a better lesson than that unless you live it yourself. But some of those situations you can’t possibly be exposed to, so what better way than in a book.”
Or a podcast. “It’s the most harmless [lesson] because it’s an abstraction when you’re reading or listening to a podcast,” Drew adds. “But it is such an important way to learn what the consequences might be if I were to treat another human being like this.”
All three women have extensive experience writing, reading and teaching young adult literature at both the college and middle school levels. Their passion for the genre and for influencing how young people develop a worldview led them to collaborate.
“We really understand how narrative functions in the culture in terms of creating empathy by reading about and embodying other people’s experiences — people who are different than you are,” says Drew.
The characters in the podcast reflect an inclusiveness that was important to the trio, as well. “We wanted to have the characters be diverse in a way that any type of person listening could identify with,” says Weisse. For example, one of the kids in the story is black and another has two moms.
The women work collaboratively on every aspect of the project, from writing the stories to tweaking the characters to making sure the audio experience is rich and dramatic. Episodes are recorded in Weisse’s home studio in Canton — hers is the voice in the podcast — and her 8-year-old son also serves as an effective test audience. “Any time I find a sound effect or some snippet of music, I play it for him to see if he thinks it’s cool, and he just freaks out,” she says.
The story is serialized into 10- to 15-minute episodes, both for the attention span of the audience and so kids can hear an entire episode either on a short car trip or at bedtime. Two six-episode seasons a year are planned right now: the current winter season and spring, which will drop as kids are getting ready for summer break.
Though the podcast targets kids and tweens, Snow Day will eventually expand its audience. “We want to be producing content for more than just that age group,” says Shevlin. “And it doesn’t necessarily have to be just us producing the content,” Weisse adds, hinting at a day when other authors could be invited to produce stories for them. “And it might also be print and audiobooks,” Drew says.
Snow Day Productions seems like that same blank slate an unexpected day off from school can be: There are so many ways they can go with it.
Listen to “Akron Adventures” at snowdayproductions.com, iTunes, PlayerFM, or wherever you find podcasts.
