Over the last few months, as the summer holidays have approached, I have been contacted by various readers looking for recommendations for good ebooks/storybook apps for children, which might help to alleviate the pressure of long car journeys or airport queues.
Many parents are naturally reluctant to introduce ebooks to their children, fearing they are just another potential distraction from reading.
However, there are a host of digital books available that will lure even reluctant young readers towards a storybook, as well as reassure parents sceptical of digital technology that an ebook can offer as valuable a narrative experience as a paperback picturebook might.
The best of these are created specifically as ebooks rather than enhanced versions of well-known titles. A quick look at the e-board books of the perennially popular Eric Carle quickly indicates why. StoryToys’ version of Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar for the iPad (iOS, €3.99), for example, is actually a series of games based on Carle’s much-loved characters and does little to encourage literacy or the needs of early readers; indeed it doesn’t even tell the story of the caterpillar who munches his way through the week before transforming into a butterfly.
If you are looking for something your young reader is already familiar with, however, Sandra Boynton’s Moo, Baa, La La La (iOS and Android, €3.99) takes a more considered approach. The digital version is actually presented as a book within the e-reading device and there are two options for reading: “read by myself” or “the big guy reads it”. In the second instance, the words are highlighted as the sonorous narrator takes you through the playful narrative at a leisurely pace.
The interactive elements, meanwhile, are focused on the noises the animals make, which are also part of the text, so you get to read as well as play sound effects. There are, of course, extra enhanced features too. You can animate the animals as the story unfolds or listen to an impromptu serenade, but the experience is not unlike the “noisy books” that have been giving pleasure to kids for decades.
Five of Boynton's books have been given this more sensitive treatment by Loud Crow, including her famous Going to Bed Book; however, that particular story isn't half as conducive to digital translation and is far too stimulating on screen to really serve the purpose of a bedtime story.
For slightly older readers, Nosy Crow are leaders in the field of digital storybooks for children. Although children will be familiar with the fairytales that the e-publishing company draws its inspiration from, the developers are not bound by the conventions of a material book, yet their versions still focus on the reading experience as much as on interactivity. Little Red Riding Hood (iOS, €4.99) offers the usual option of reading yourself or being read to, and on first encounter the “read to me” option is definitely preferable, as the interactive elements of the ebook are demanding enough; young readers will need at least some experience using tablet devices to navigate it.
The narration is, refreshingly, presented by children, which helps to draw children in, though it might irritate supervising adults. The narrative presentation, meanwhile, offers non-linear options that encourage and emulate the improvisation that often takes place when reading aloud to children. Game play within the app, meanwhile, is linked to the narrative too: the reader’s selection of objects to bring on Red Riding Hood’s journey, for example, determines the way in which the wolf is defeated. Nosy Crow have so far published five fairytale ebooks, which have been so successful that they have now been published in traditional format too.
For older readers, and adults with a grim sense of irony, The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore is a paean to traditional publishing, presented in the most sophisticated digital format. The eponymous hero loves words and stories. He writes his own books, too, but the pages are scattered by a terrible storm, which sends him on an odyssey to a secret nesting place for lost books, where he lives happily ever after; could the authors mean a library?
The story is based on William Joyce’s picturebook of the same name, and the animation of his sepia-tinged illustrations echo the nostalgic thrust of the narrative, which recalls the days before digital distraction. Extras are limited to an animated short film that extends the narrative slightly, but for the most part the ebook version is exactly that: a digital picturebook rather than a story-based game.
Joshua Wilson’s The UnStealer (iOS and Android, €3.99) is an interactive ebook with a simple game element, but the interactive elements are so closely linked to the project of literacy that any reservations are put aside. The story revolves around an unlikely and unobtrusive hero who is busy snatching the “un”s from negative adjectives, turning the unhappy world into a place full of joy with a flick of his fingers or a swoop of his net. He turns a clown’s disastrously unfunny debut into a rave and tames an unfriendly dog into the neighbourhood charmer.
The unconventional story is full of pleasing internal rhymes and unusual vocabulary, with Donna Wilson’s watercolour illustrations offering a pleasing palette that is slowly turned upside down by the UnStealer’s altruistic activities. The narration for the read-aloud version is awful, but thankfully the default setting is off, and you have to request it on each page by tapping the screen. The UnStealer is a joyous introduction to grammatical essentials. It is safe to say, you won’t find anything like it elsewhere: either in print or virtual form.
