Here are extracts from an anthology of litch bits, past present and future, sent to secondary schools by the Curator of a museum of the History of the Book in the far flung future. It was made in 2oo9 by Chris Meade, Toni Le Busque and Sasha Hoare, funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.

These extracts include new work commissioned for the anthology – living authors imagining what might be written in the future – and classic texts illuminated digitally. 

Hello? Hello? Are you receiving me?
Yoofpeople of 0021 we communiback to you today from the farflung future where me are curator cheesebig of HOTBOOK venerable institute along the approximates of what you name a Myoozeeyum of textefacts, wordblobs, amalgae of culturals of the past coupla millennia. We is attempting assemblage of section Inglitch from the duomillen prequel to the Great Wipe. Can you pleez help?

This message is being beamed from the future to secondary students in the UK via HOTBOOK, a ground breaking and free digital resource created by if:book.

HOTBOOK aims to ignite a passion for literature (past, present and future) by introducing and exploring fragments of great works and presenting them in a way that will excite an audience that is more at ease with an electronic game or gadget than a book and with people who spend time social networking rather than reading. The project was funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and ran in three pilot secondary schools in 2010.

Here we are posting extracts worth reading in their own right and adaptable for different uses in the classroom.

LUKE’S MESSAGE by Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph  

A future fiction commissioned by  if:book UK.

Kate Pullinger writes for both print and digital platforms.  In 2009 her novelThe Mistress of Nothing won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, one of Canada’s most prestigious literary prizes.  Her prize-winning digital fiction projects Inanimate Alice and Flight Paths: A Networked Novel have reached audiences around the world.

The Reader by Jacob Polley, illuminated by Toni Le Busque

Jacob Polley is the author of The Brink (2003), Little Gods (2006) and The Havocs (2012). He is regarded as one of the leading talents of the Next Generation of British poets. His first novel, Talk of the Town, was published in 2009 and won the 2010 Somerset Maugham Award.

Artist Toni Le Busque has created a version of the poem where each line melts through versions of all its drafts before settling in its final form.

If you’d like to use any of these resources in your classroom and/or would like more info on the project, fill out the form below. It’s all free to use in schools.