The app In Front of My House (Winged Chariot, 2011) based on Dubuc’s book of the same title, begins, “On top of a small hill, behind a brown fence, under a big oak tree, is my house.” It’s much the same style as Animal Masquerade, starting with an image on one page that is somehow related to the next page, to the next page, and so on, until it comes full circle (unlike Animal Masquerade). The pattern is varied by playful twists and turns, such as the “nothing at all” that is thankfully under the bed (“phew!”) — or the dragon that is behind the princess in the story book that is under the old sock that is next to the nothing at all! Users may switch back and forth between English and French text/narration at any point during the story.

"Behind the family of rabbits... the big bad wolf. Inside the big bad wolf... three little pigs, the house of brick, the house of wood, the house of straw, Mr. Seguin's goat, the boy who cried wolf, the stone soup, the grandmother and little red riding hood."

Each new image appears in an unexpected way, by peeking into the screen from one of the sides, pulsing — that’s when you’re supposed to drag it out into the open — or as part of the background or landscape you swipe to pan. Since the backgrounds are generally blank space, I felt impatient after a while having to retrieve every pulsing image and began swiping through the pages like crazy. The problem with that approach: each illustration and narrated text took too long to appear, with a dignified fade in that made me wish I could just flip the pages as quickly as I wanted.

The app is beautiful, but this long (120 pages!) picture book makes for a very long app experience. iPad only; $2.99.

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Help! There is an onion trapped in this book, destined for certain death! It is up to us to save her from the Big Fry, the greatest fear of onions everywhere. But this onion has hope: “Yet I have been told / That there’s a way out / For an ONION who challenges, / Questions and doubts.”

All pretty mystifying and just plain weird, but readers interested in existential philosophizing may be tickled by the onion-like layers of meaning in Sara Fanelli’s interactive book The Onion’s Great Escape (Phaidon, May).

The book has no qualms about jumping into fundamental questions from the first peel. At the start of the volume, an onion’s face emerges from a series of solid red-washed double-page spreads. “WHO AM I?” the onion asks, soon followed by “WHO ARE YOU?” Faced with her imminent death, the onion leads us through an exploration of deep concepts like fear, time, memory, reality, imagination, and morality.

As we move from contemplation to contemplation, we punch out the onion’s perforated silhouette.

With each poignant question, we shed one more layer of the onion–or something like that. Then as we think about the onion’s thoughts and ask ourselves those same questions, we gradually free the onion from the book, and from her fate. (How exactly? I’m not entirely sure.) Then we can make a 3-D model of the onion that we’ve liberated from the prison of her pages.

Mechanically speaking, it’s hard to re-read the book once the onion has been freed, because a lot of relevant text and images appear directly on the form of the now-flown onion. But the self-actualization is worth it—at least to the onion.

"Who are you?"

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In anticipation, I’ve been perusing several pieces of fine literature, to wit: The Hunger Games: The Official Illustrated Movie Companion (Scholastic, February), Stars in the Arena: Meet the Hotties of The Hunger Games (Simon Pulse, February), and The Hunger Games Tribute Guide (Scholastic, February).

The Official Illustrated Movie Companion is fairly comprehensive, with bios, behind-the-scenes photos, and making-of trivia. We hear from author Suzanne Collins herself, the director, the producer, all the cast members, set designers, costume designers… it’s a big love-fest. There are also lots of huge, shiny pictures of prettiness. The takeaway: the people in the Capitol are going to be fun to look at. And keep an eye out for Wes Bentley’s beard. You’ll know it when you see it.

Speaking of things that are fun to look at, in Stars in the Arena: Meet the Hotties of The Hunger Games, we discover the answers to such questions as “Could Jennifer Lawrence survive in the wild like Katniss?”, “Is Josh Hutcherson as romantic as Peeta?”, and “Is Liam [Hemsworth] in love with Jen in real life?” …Wait, is he?

Sadly, they’re just friends, but I was totally whipped into a frenzy of fandom right there.

There’s obviously a conflation of the actors and their characters in all of these books, but it reaches a whole new level in the Tribute Guide, which begins with a sinister “Citizens of Panem, are you ready?” Now we’re the audience both in the real world and in the story? Not sure how I feel about that. The rest of the meta-exercise is essentially a program for viewers watching the book’s reality TV show, The Hunger Games.

Ooh, when are they going to make the TV show?

Yup, it’s definitely T-minus time.

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