Everyone loves a good book, especially when shared with a young one.
Colourful, gripping, imagination building, educational, magical, there are many words that can be used to describe a wonderful bed time story.
The basic principle behind a story book hasn’t changed that much since their conception, a combination of words and pictures describe a story and the imagination fills in the rest, until now.
Interactive Books differ from traditional e-books by offering a multimedia approach to storytelling, the story will be read to you by a syllable perfect voice actor, an accompanying soundtrack might be majestic, objects on the page can be interacted with, it’s story telling on a different scale.
A great example of an Interactive Book is Little Big Foot on the iPad from Mothership Publishing.
An Enchanting Story
Set in an enchanting world of the Big Foot, Little Big Foot provides an engaging and moralistic adventure as the reader follows a work shy young member of the Big Foot community on an exciting adventure.
Everything about the App is of the highest quality, from the imitation paper texture on each virtual page to the pacing of the story, Little Big Foot does a great job of pulling young (and young at heart) readers into its world.
The art work in Little Big Foot is great with the graphics maintaining a traditional hand drawn feel, and there are plenty of interactive elements which is of course something which can’t be replicated in a traditional book.
The soundtrack from the App has been getting some attention and it’s easy to see why, as its memorable themes compliment the story perfectly.
Beautiful Hand Drawn Graphics
The electronic nature of the book doesn’t necessarily make this a solitary activity, in fact reading it through with my four year old son was a great experience, but it does add the option to entertain little ones without direct supervision.
I don’t believe that Interactive books will ever replace tradition paper based ones, and it would be a shame if they replaced shared story time, but as a complementary experience Little Big Foot sets a great example of what can be achieved.
Little Big Foot can be downloaded on iOS here.