What's Ahead for Kids' Books on the iPad
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Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 03/22/2010
Book publishers have some Harry Potter-like magic in store for books that will debut on Apple’s new iPad platform.Live glossaries, audio and video notes users can create right in the text, taking live quizzes and having them scored in the book—all these details are expected to go live, according to Josh Koppel (pictured), chief creative officer and cofounder of ScrollMotion, which develops iPhone and ebook applications for book publishers.
“Textbooks are the most complex to make digital,” he says. “All the things that make textbooks great, including graphics, graphs, highlighting text, and glossaries have to be taken into account.”
Working with McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Pearson, and Kaplan, ScrollMotion has had experience bringing digital tests to other Apple platforms. He thinks textbooks for college and high school students will be among the earliest to adapt to the iPad format, followed by books for younger kids.
Penguin Books, which produces stories from the Spot early reader line, to the "Vampire Academy" series for older readers, recently unveiled a rough idea of how they might use the iPad for their children’s books. CEO John Makinson recently showed off these features in London, including board books that bark and live chats between readers, as reported by paidContent.
Penguin Group and Makinson declined to speak for this story. And book publisher HarperCollins did not return an emailed interview request, as well. But given Apple’s notoriously secretive behavior prior to launching a new product, it’s not surprising that many publishers are buttoned up until the official launch of the iPad on April 3.
However, given ScrollMotion’s experience, Koppel feels confident that many of those features will appear in products intended for the iPad, including being able to upgrade content on the device. “I feel we’re going to make better choices about what we print and throw away,” he says. “Textbooks are very heavy and change every year. I think textbook companies need to see themselves as platform companies. Digital is just a better mode for certain materials.”
