Analyzing Dynamic Literacy Story Maps: "Southern Literary Trail"

     From "Southern Literary Trail" at "Georgia Humanities"

The "Southern Literary Trail" story map tells the tale of influential Southern writers and their influences within the tristate area of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. Each pop-up gives the name of the city in question when hovered over with the mouse cursor. For readers who prefer a bit more structure, we have the option to scroll through the locations in a set order, I personally prefer to learn information in a pre-planned order, in succession. However, I am not the only reader out there, and this method is not the only option for viewing the information. Within the scope of the dynamic nature of the text, we as readers also have the option to click on the locations and learn about them in any order we choose.

The topic of civil rights struggle runs throughout the locations and the stories of the writers who lived and worked in such times. The contribution that almost every author made to support these civil rights movements is touched upon in the descriptions of most locations.

In particular, I'd like to analyze two successive pages about Monroeville - and the two authors whose stories are discussed in those pages. Within the American public school system, most of us have read Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird". The first page describes how Lee's experiences in her hometown of Monroeville shaped the setting and events of her famous novel. The second page describes Lee's relationship with another famous writer - Truman Capote - and how these close neighbors influenced one another's experiences as young writers. Their respective works even featured characters inspired by one another.

Within the structure of the story map, these two pages don't have separate pop-ups to click on, and are instead presented together. I believe that this was a good choice for the overall narrative that the two pages build, as the information detailed in both is intimately related. That makes this structure within the overall story map an effective method of conveying the tale of Lee and Capote to us as readers.

One critique I have isn't concerning these two particular pages, but rather the story map as a whole. There's no way to find a path through one writer's life at a time without lucky guessing. While I understand the need for diversity for the order in which we can click through the locations in a dynamic text, I found myself randomly clicking through the locations until I found the continuation of a particular author's life story. Perhaps including color-coded lines connecting the locations that discuss the same authors would've added to the story map's presentation as a whole.