Abstract
Book apps have developed into a new format for the picture book. Given the crucial role that picture books have played in early childhood education, it seems pertinent to ascertain the ways in which they have been affected by digitisation. In response to concerns regarding a lack of models and design principles within children’s digital publications, this transdisciplinary study attempts to go some way towards addressing the need for more research in this area. The article draws on research into children’s literature and human–computer interaction, analysing a range of digital picture books and arguing that people read ebooks, whereas they use book apps, the latter being far more media-rich and interactive. The article also uncovers ways in which designers can use media-rich interactive features to further children’s engagement with their literature.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
One such upgrade was EPUB3.
Interaction design is a discipline within the field of human–computer interaction. Jonas Löwgren states that interaction designers practise a “designerly approach” to shaping digital artefacts, by which he means an approach that goes “beyond pure utility and efficiency to consider also aesthetic qualities of use” (2013, n.p.).
References
Base Factory. (2013). Animalia (Version 3.2). Accessed 23 Sep 2014 from https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/animalia-for-ipad/id388861927?mt=8.
Birkerts, Sven. (2006). The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. New York: Faber and Faber.
Cope, Bill. (2001). New Ways with Words: Print and Etext Convergence. In Bill Cope and Diana Kalantzis (Eds.), Print and Electronic Text Convergence (pp. 1–15). C-2-C Series. Altona: Common Ground Publishing.
Crawford, Chris. (2003). The Art of Interactive Design: A Euphonious and Illuminating Guide to Building Successful Software. San Francisco: No Starch Press.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. (2011). Divine Art, Infernal Machine: The Reception of Printing in the West from First Impressions to the Sense of an Ending. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Frasca, Gonzalo. (2001). What is Ludology? Accessed 20 July 2013 from http://www.ludology.org/2001/07/what-is-ludolog.html.
French, Jackie and Whatley, Bruce. (2011). Diary of a Wombat (eBook). Sydney: HarperCollins.
Garrish, Matt. (2011). What is EPUB3? Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media.
Gessler, Nicholas. (1998). Skeuomorphs and Cultural Algorithms, Proceedings Of The Seventh International Conference On Evolutionary Programming (pp. 229–238). Springer-Verlag: Berlin.
Goodenough, Amanda. (1987). Inigo Gets Out. Santa Cruz: AmandaStories.
Hedlund, Julie. (2012). Apps and eBooks: A Report from Bologna’s Tools of Change Conference. In Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Bulletin (pp. 22–23). July/August. Los Angeles, CA: SCBWI.
Jenkins, Henry. (2004). Game Design as Narrative Architecture. In Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan (Eds.), First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game (pp. 118–130). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Juul, Jesper. (2003). The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness. Accessed 20 July 2013 from http://ocw.metu.edu.tr/pluginfile.php/4471/mod_resource/content/0/ceit706/week3_new/JesperJuul_GamePlayerWorld.pdf.
Löwgren, Jonas. (2013). Interaction Design—Brief Intro. In Mads Soegaard and Rikke Friis Dam (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd edn. Aarhus, Denmark: The Interaction Design Foundation. Accessed 30 Jan 2014 from http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/interaction_design.html.
Madej, Krystina. (2003). Towards Digital Narrative for Children: From Education to Entertainment, a Historical Perspective. Computers in Entertainment (CIE), 1(1), 1–17.
McLean, Kristen and Kulo, Carl. (2013). The Children’s Book Consumer in the Digital Age. New York: Bowker.
Moonbot Studios. (2011). The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (Version 1.4). Accessed 20 June 2014 from https://itunes.apple.com/app/fantastic-flying-books-mr./id438052647?mt=8.
Nelson, Ted. (1965). A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing and the Indeterminate. Accessed 20 July 2013 from http://signallake.com/innovation/FileStructure65.pdf.
Nikolajeva, Maria and Scott, Carole. (2006). How Picturebooks Work. New York: Routledge.
Nodelman, Perry. (1988). Words About Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children’s Picture Books. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Nosy Crow. (2013). Little Red Riding Hood (Version 1.0.5). Accessed 20 June 2014 from https://itunes.apple.com/app/little-red-riding-hood-by/id626696483?mt=8.
Penguin. (2011). The Heart and the Bottle for iPad. Accessed 20 Jan 2013 from https://itunes.apple.com/app/heart-bottle-for-ipad/id407795360?mt=8.
Pieńkowski, Jan. (1991). Phone Book. Los Angeles: Price Stern Sloan.
Qadri, Saadat. (2011a). So What Does “Book App” Really Mean? Accessed 20 June 2012 from https://getsatisfaction.com/demibooks/topics/so_what_does_book_app_really_mean.
Qadri, Saadat. (2011b). Why Might an App Possibly be Rejected? Accessed 20 June 2012 from https://getsatisfaction.com/demibooks/topics/why_might_an_app_possibly_be_rejected.
Salen, Katie and Zimmerman, Eric. (2004). Rules of Play. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Sargeant, Betty. (2014). How Far is Up? (Version 1.2). Accessed 20 Oct 2014 https://itunes.apple.com/app/how-far-is-up/id860628627?mt=8.
Sargeant, Betty. (2013). Interactive Storytelling: How Picture Book Conventions Inform Multimedia Book App Narratives. Australian Journal of Intelligent Processing Systems, 13(3), 29–35.
Sargeant, Betty. (2012). Red New York: Utales.
Sesame Workshop. (2011). The Monster at the End of this Book…Starring Grover! (Version 4.3). Accessed 20 June 2014 from https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/monster-at-end-this-book...starring/id409467802?mt=8.
Sipe, Lawrence R. (1998). How Picture Books Work: A Semiotically Framed Theory of Text-Picture Relationships. Children’s Literature in Education, 29(2), 97–108.
Smeets, Daisy. (2012). Storybook Apps as a Tool for Early Literacy Development. Accessed 20 Aug 2013 from https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/20363.
Smeets, Daisy and Bus, Adriana. (2013). Picture Storybooks Go Digital: Pros and Cons. In Susan B. Neuman and Linda B. Gambrell (Eds.), Quality Reading Instruction in the age of Common Core Standards (pp. 176–189). Newark: International Reading Association.
Smeets, Daisy and Bus, Adriana. (2014). The Interactive Animated e-book as a Word Learning Device for Kindergartens. In Applied Psycholinguistics (pp. 1–22). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/S0142716413000556.
Stephens, John, Watson, Ken D and Parker, Judith. (2003). From Picture Book to Literary Theory. Sydney: St Clair Press.
Stone, Jon and Smollin, Michael. (1971). The Monster at the End of This Book: Starring Lovable, Furry Old Grover. Wisconsin: Golden Books.
What’s the Fuss. (2011). Guess Who? At the Zoo (Version 1.1). Accessed 23 Sep 2014 from https://itunes.apple.com/app/guess-who-at-the-zoo/id489708348?mt=8.
Wikert, Joe. (2012a). HTML5, EPUB 3, and Ebooks vs. Web Apps. O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing. Accessed 20 Mar 2013 from http://toc.oreilly.com/2012/09/html5-epub-3-and-ebooks-vs-web-apps.html.
Wikert, Joe. (2012b). EPUB 3 Facts and Forecasts. O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing. Accessed 20 Mar 2013 from http://toc.oreilly.com/2012/10/epub-3-facts-and-forecasts.html.
Wikert, Joe. (2012c). eBooks as Native Apps vs. Web Apps. O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing. Accessed 20 Mar 2013 from http://toc.oreilly.com/2012/10/ebooks-as-native-apps-vs-web-apps.html.
Yokata, Junko and Teale, William H. (2014). Picture Books and the Digital World: Educators Making Informed Choices. The Reading Teacher, 67(8), 577–585.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Betty Sargeant
Betty Sargeant lectures in Media Studies at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. She is currently being funded by the Australian Government and RMIT University for a PhD on the design of children’s book apps. Trained in both visual art and creative writing, Betty also writes and illustrates picture books and designs book apps, including How Far is Up? which was a finalist in the Premier’s Design Awards (2014).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sargeant, B. What is an ebook? What is a Book App? And Why Should We Care? An Analysis of Contemporary Digital Picture Books. Child Lit Educ 46, 454–466 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-015-9243-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-015-9243-5