Ebooks and Children

Children are starting to bombarded with interactive multimedia; ipads, tablets, laptops, Nintendo, smart phones etc. And this also includes ebooks. Children are starting to expect a certain level of interactivity and ebooks can provide that, while also encouraging reading.

Patrick Carman, author of young adult and children's books, has talked at numerous schools. During his Ted Talk lecture, he explains - worryingly - that books don't feature in children's "Top 5" things to do anymore. Instead, they have become hooked on entertainment media; ipads, phones, laptops etc.

The 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation report shows that children (aged 8-18) spend a staggering 7 hours and 38 minutes using entertainment media per day. If you factor in doing two things at once, such as texting and watching TV, it jumps to 11 hours per day. When you consider that the average child is awake for 15 hours a day, this seems incredible.

Carman came up with a way to encourage more children to read. He did this with his book "Skeleton Creek". Intervals are broken between chapters of the book, where, after reading about 20-30 pages, the child comes across a password. This password can be used online to unlock a short clip that relates to the story. Children can go back and forth several times between the book and TV clips. This has encouraged children who don't read that often to get back into the hobby.

"The 39 Clues" is a series of ten books by seven different writers. The book includes a "hidden panel", where you can take out collectable trading cards. You can also take this book online by typing the number of the cards onto the associated website. You then became part of the story. You can search for these clues, along with other users, online. Carman explains that the "tech is getting [the children into the story] and maybe the book is holding them". He goes on to say, "The tech is playing a very big role in getting these kids to pick up these books". 

These multimedia elements have set up expectations:

Nosy Crow

Nosy Crow was founded in 2010 and is now a leading company for ebooks, apps and children's books. The books they produce have a target audience for children ages 0-14.

Jack and the Beanstalk:

As can be seen in the clip above, the interactive levels are very high. It is almost like playing a game, yet broken up with parts of the story.

They also  published a post explaining how they went about making their Jack and the Beanstalk story. Seen here: http://nosycrow.com/blog/how-we-made-jack-and-the-beanstalk


References:
http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxNYED-Patrick-Carman-0305201
http://www.patrickcarman.com/the-author/
http://nosycrow.com/