Toddler Book Apps

Interactive versions of books for very young children are becoming mainstream. Are they enhancing early reading experience – or diminishing it?

From an article in the Guardian...

I love huddling over books with my daughter – sharing words, stories and ideas. The relationship between adult narrator, child and book is complex. I just don't see how there can be an app for that. Am I deluded? Is the digitalisation of picture books inevitable?

Children's laureate Julia Donaldson certainly doesn't think so. She vetoed an ebook of her bestselling The Gruffalo, because she thinks interactive book apps for the very young are a bad idea. Her opinion is shared by children's librarian Ferelith Hordon, who chairs the judging panel for this year's Kate Greenaway and Carnegie medals.

"I have concerns about how such apps are presented," Hordon says. "I don't think that they're the book, and I think that that should be made very clear. They are great fun and they have their place. But on the whole, they distract from the reading experience. For very small children there is something very special – and something that needs to be treasured – in listening to the parent's voice reading.

"If you start putting pop-ups and twiddles and voices into the picture book experience, where is the difference between that and a film or a game? In this world in which there is so much noise and movement is there no value in promoting stillness and thought?"