Nielsen Book reported that in a survey in 2013 80% of children aged 17 and under preferred alternative activities to reading (Farrington, 2013). These activities included playing games, texting and watching films and Television (Farrington, 2013). This trend sheds light on the rise in popularity of products that condense a number of these activities into providing a reading experience whereby text is supported by video, audio, interactive animation and game. Such products may be defined as interactive storybooks.
Interactive children’s stories are a recent innovation. Pictures have been integrated into children’s publications for decades, yet it is only since the millennium that publishers have been able to create stories that contain a host of multimedia thanks to great advances in technology.
In 2014 David Fahrer combined physical print copy with interactive storytelling in publishing a printed book that can only be read with the aid of an app (Fahrer, 2014). The book holds a physical space for a smartphone to be inserted and includes an app which plays interactive animations that a child can manipulate whilst reading, for example, by making a penguin dance or a lion roar. The app therefore supplements the printed text and the reading experience is enhanced as the child is in control of the story.
Interactive storytelling brings about many benefits to young readers. Nielsen Book reported last year that 25%–33% of children read digitally (Farrington, 2013) and Michigan State University professor Anne Dyson emphasises this, explaining that ‘children are in a media-filled world that is increasingly diverse’ (Dyson in Evans, 2004, p. x). Dyson argues that the inclusion of audio-visual content provides a learning environment that is ‘imaginative and enjoyable’ for children (Dyson in Evans, 2004, p. x) and further argues that teachers of children aged between four to ten years old should seriously consider the inclusion of interactive texts to their school curriculums. Indeed a number of studies have shown that children gain more from reading text that is supported with other media such as images, video and sound (Kress, 2003), and thus increasingly publishers are producing children’s products that contain varying combinations of media in order to cater towards children's needs.
An ongoing concern about this publishing format is that for an interactive storybook to be entertaining it must contain enough multimedia to maintain a child’s interest, however the non-text content should support the text and not deviate too far from the story or message of the text. Executive director of the Association of Booksellers for Children Kirsten McLean supports this viewpoint and argues that ‘parents would rather see their kids engaged in book content than in game content’ (McLean in Springen, 2010). According to Nielsen Books & Consumer’s survey of British book buying habits the printed book remains an ever-popular choice, as it made up 87% of children’s book sales for the first six months of 2014 (2014, Milliot). Therefore despite the benefits that interactivity may provide to texts and its increasing popularity, it is clear that there is still a significant market for the traditional printed book.
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Bibliography
Evans, J. (2004). Literacy Moves On. Oxford: David Fulton Publishers.
Fahrer, D. (2014.) If You Owned a Zoo. New York: Kickstarter.
Fahrer, D. (2014). Little Magic Books! - Next Generation Children's Books [online] Available at: <https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/david-fahrer/little-magic-books> [Accessed 30th September 2014].
Farrington, J. (2014). Gadgets trump reading, Bookseller Conference hears. The Bookseller, [online] Available at: <http://www.thebookseller.com/news/gadgets-trump-reading-bookseller-conference-hears> [Accessed 30th September 2014].
Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. London: Routledge.
Milliot, J. (2014). E-books Still Outsold by Hardcover and Paperback. Publishers Weekly, [online] Available at: <http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/64170-e-books-remain-third.html> [Accessed 30th September 2014].
Springen, K. (2010). The Digital Revolution in Children’s Publishing. Publishers Weekly, [online] Available at: <http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/43879-the-digital-revolution-in-children-s-publishing.html> [Accessed 30th September 2014].