For my March teen program at the library, I’m going to be doing a workshop on book trailers – what they are, how to make them. I feel – and this is strange for me – the desire to thank James Patterson, as he is responsible for the only book trailers I’ve ever seen actually aired on television. Other people have seen them too, which I hope will make it easier for them to recognize what these are and how they’re sometimes used.

Anyway, I’ll show some examples of various trailers, but I’m also going to walk the teens through how I made one myself. For that, I figured I’d make a new one, as my old Flyy Girl trailer is, um, a bit risqué. (Also, complicated to create.)

So! I chose the book Son of the Mob by Gordon Korman, as I read it last year and loved it. Made the following trailer in iMovie:

Then, I decided to try out Animoto. And guys, Animoto is fun. And SIMPLE. I’m going to use the one I made using that program for my step-by-step trailer how-to, because it is WAY easier than iMovie. (The downside being that, with a free account, you can only make videos that are quite short. Still, that just forces you to be creative. Editing for the win!) Anyway, here’s the trailer I made with Animoto: