CASCADE TOWNSHIP — Annette Bourland only had to watch her 3-year-old son to see the
potential for children’s books on the iPad
.
He quickly figured how to move the pages on the enhanced book, says the vice president/publisher for ZonderKidz.
“You didn’t have to give any instruction. Not all apps are like that for kids,” Bourland said.
Displaying “Berenstain Bears and the Golden Rule” on her iPad, she demonstrates how the animated pictures are paired with music and narration as each word lights up. She touches the characters on the screen and the narrator says their names.
Children's books will be a big focus of titles Zondervan releases for iPads because of the eReader's color capacity.
Nintendo DS, which also has color capacity, has been used for children’s e-books for the past three years. But Nintendo was interested in mainly top-selling commercial properties, Bourland said.
“But this (iPad) came along and changed the direction of where we were going,” she said.
Bourland envisions e-books getting more interactive and using multimedia.
For example, Zondervan’s Narnia books might integrate scenes from the film versions of the books. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third installment in the Narnia series coming out in December is being made 20th Century Fox, another property of News Corp.
“Now, we are cousins working on the same content. So why wouldn’t Fox want to embed its clips into Narnia books so people who see it will want to buy or download the movie?” Bourland asked.
E-mail Shandra Martinez: smartinez@grpress.com and follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/shandramartinez