Stuck in hospital, Kyle feels indifferent about life, but then he gets accosted by the Artful Dodger! Sucked into a book world, suddenly Kyle finds he has to fight for more than just his life. He has to fight to save the world!
The Story so far…
At the tender age of seventeen, Kyle has already been thrown a few curved balls. His mum and dad are getting divorced (it’s a common story but that doesn’t mean it’s not crumby), his younger brother is taller, bigger and better looking (or so Kyle suspects); and his dodgy kidneys have finally decided to pack it in.
So he’s lying in a hospital bed stuck to a dialysis machine (which he has nicknamed Marlene) awaiting a transplant. Then he receives a mysterious book in the mail, entitled “Kyle Davis: My life with a machine named Marlene.” It’s an autobiography! – or is it? Halfway through Chapter One, Kyle finds himself in a jungle with a boy he doesn’t know, being chased by a dragon! He’s pretty sure it’s not the meds….
Thus our hero begins his unlikely journey. The Artful Dodger is the ‘bad boy’ behind it all. Dodge is a Book Jumper who leapt out of Oliver Twist when he got tired of life of petty crime. He wants Kyle to know that all the stories in the world actually exist in their own story worlds, and that the barrier between them can be crossed. Chunks of story worlds creep into the “real” world all the time – this is where authors get their inspiration!
But the Book Jumpers who can bound from story world to story world – ah, now they’re special. The Artful Dodger is one, and he’s detected (or decided) that Kyle can be a Book Jumper too.
It takes a really special kid with a big heart and an open mind to cross between genres and narratives. It can be exhausting, as it takes up all of your imagination: you have to be careful that you leave yourself with enough fantasy fuel to get home.
However the Book Jumpers are not considered heroes by everyone. The officers of the Story Division do everything they can to stop Book Jumpers from traversing different worlds as the ripple effect it causes can affect the entire story worlds. When too many Book Jumpers use their imagination at once, the whole story world changes.
Nancy is one of the top officers at the Story Division. She comes from a long line of Book Detectives and considers it her personal and professional duty to prevent the Book Jumpers from messing up books. When Kyle enters this crazy realm of stories, he becomes torn between Dodge and Nancy – between chaos and order. That is, of course, until all stories in the story worlds face a new, unprecedented threat from two of the worst villains of all time: Dr Zero. This nefarious villain of an unpublished comic book series has grand plans to take over the ordered world and The Mother Goose Corporation who make stories “Nice and PC” by sweeping away the ugliness and pain with big fiction brooms. What Dr Zero and The Mother Goose Corporation are planning will affect the entire fabric of every society; and forevermore change the way we connect, communicate and convey messages.
Kyle has a tough but vital lesson to learn: that some things are worth fighting for – like stories, family and your life.
Synopsis
Book Jumpers is a true Transmedia project, that takes the very concept of Transmedia – jumping between narratives, stories and environments – and weaves it into a Story World that is delivered across multiple platforms.
Set both in ‘our world’ and the worlds of famous stories, users are invited to join the very old and very secret organization – The Story Division to help protect the stories we know and love, because if too many stories are damaged, the world will be affected.
Once users have signed up to become Story Division recruits, they will commence their training by being linked up with a Story Division officer and assigned to a story world that has been affected by a Book Jumper. Together with their guide, the user must talk to the characters, follow clues, solve puzzles, even shoot things! And put the story world back to how it should be.
Users can see how their work has contributed to keeping stories safe by tuning in each week to a half hour episode of a 13 part television series. Inside the Story Division Incident room users will be able to see their name on the detective honour board and their case marked ‘solved’ on the whiteboard.
Users can also help out further by reading more books on the ‘jumped list’. Books can either be downloaded as Ebooks onto a tablet or can be found at your local library and scanned with your smart phone or webcam using Augmented Reality technology to see what is going on behind the pages.
Once the users have completed their training and passed their final exam, they will be asked to complete their own book. This book is an account of their finest heroic moments in the story worlds as well as information that the user provides of favourite things, dreams (maybe even secrets). Once complete, this book will be printed and sent to the user so that they can jump into story worlds on their own.
But no sooner has the user become a fully-fledged Story Division member capable of doing book jumps, than they will get approached by one of our villains – eager to steal their talents and have them cross over to the dark side.
The television series will culminate with a battle across all of the game worlds, where the Story Division recruits must stop Dr Zero and the Mother Goose Corporation from trying to take over all the worlds.
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