Publications about books for children and young adults
Caillou Stickers! (Night & Day Studios and Cookie Jar Entertainment, July 2012) is a straightforward digital sticker book for the preschool set. Users select one of seven backgrounds such as a schoolyard, birthday party, campsite, and park, then drag and drop brightly colored images of well-known PBS character Caillou, his friends, family, pets, and toys [...]
At the meeting when the Horn Book staff decided starred reviews for the May/June Magazine issue, we read aloud Marianne Dubuc’s picture book Animal Masquerade. It took a good fifteen minutes (each one of them absolutely delightful). The app In Front of My House (Winged Chariot, 2011) based on Dubuc’s book of the same title, [...]
In Bobo Explores Light by Game Collage (September 2011; updated June 2012), Bobo, a cute robot with an appropriately light bulb–like head, is our guide for a quick trip through the solar system toward the sun—and from there, onto a discussion of light in its many forms. Bobo takes users on a roughly chronological review [...]
Being a big Disney/Pixar fan, I went to see the new movie Brave on opening weekend. Brave is the story of Merida, an independent, archery-loving young Scottish princess who longs to control her own destiny despite her mother’s wish to marry her off. When a magic spell Merida buys from a witch turns her mother [...]
Pip and Posy: Fun and Games (Nosy Crow, April) is based on Axel Scheffler’s picture book series featuring the two young friends. In the books, Posy, a mouse, and Pip, a rabbit, help each other navigate “the dramas of toddler life” such as learning to share, coping with “accidents,” and working out disagreements. As the [...]
Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral’s young adult novel Chopsticks (Penguin/Razorbill, February 2012) tells the story of seventeen-year-old piano prodigy Gloria Fleming. Lonely Glory seems to have little in her life but her music and her demanding father/teacher; her mother died several years ago. Then Frank Mendoza, a recent arrival from Argentina, moves in next door, [...]
Barefoot Books collaborated with developer Touch Press on a digital companion to their Barefoot Books World Atlas written by Nick Crane and illustrated by David Dean (November 2011). The atlas’s introduction explains that unlike most atlases, it’s organized by region rather than continent, partly to emphasize how “people in different parts of the world have [...]
It’s Byron Barton’s Planes (March) and Boats (April) in app format from Oceanhouse Media and HarperCollins. Matching the books’ engaging simplicity and directness, both apps enhance the print versions without distracting users with over-the-top interactive elements. The text is read by an enthusiastic narrator, whether the sound is on or off. If you choose to [...]
If you were like me, you applauded Press Here, the ingenious book by Hervé Tullet, for its anti-app bravado. If the news that there is now an app version (Chronicle, April) of the book disgusts you, please don’t be too quick to judge. The first thing to realize is that Press Here was translated from [...]
Big Nate: Comix by U! (based on the books by Lincoln Peirce; HarperCollins and Night & Day Studios, December) is a kind of Colorforms set for new media starring Nate Wright, a sixth-grade antihero who makes Greg Heffley look like a wimpy kid. In this app, Nate’s fans and budding playwrights press-and-place a variety of [...]
