Bestselling children’s book author Rosemary Wells is teaming up with app developer Auryn Inc. and the multimedia story producer Fourth Story Media to launch a series of entertaining and educational story apps for children. The new series, Bunny Fun, allows kids to listen to a song or sing along in different languages and will launch with Bunny Fun: Head, Shoulder, Knees and Toes, featuring a new Wells character in an interactive app that will be offered for free download until April 15.
Bunny Fun: Head, Shoulder, Knees and Toes will feature a new bunny character that dons a new outfit and sets out to travel singing the kids preschool song “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,” while the lyrics to the song appear on the screen. Kids can listen to the song, sing along, make their own recording or learn to sing the song in one of four different languages.
The app is available through the iTunes App Store for free download beginning today until April 15, when it will go on sale for $3.99. The new collaboration will produce interactive apps for mobile and tablet devices including the iPad2. The next app in the series will be released later in 2011.
Umesh Shukla, founder and CCO of Auryn Inc. described the new venture as an effort to “move storybook apps into the future by offering an original character, sing-along, reading and movement encouragement, and a multi-ultural, bilingual experience in one ultra-educational, fun app.”
Wells, who has written and illustrated more than 120 books, said she saw her granddaughters singing the children’s song in Japanese, and immediately thought, “That should be an app. I wanted to make an app that could not be done as a book. It's my belief that as a new generation of kids accesses the world of apps, they can connect to children's literature and characters from their favorite books in ways never imagined before.”
Fourth Story Media CEO Lisa Holton said Wells’s new app is “all about the magic of a small child singing, dancing, reading and creating. Tablets and smartphones allow us to use touch, sound, and movement to marry language and open-ended play. Rosemary has translated her storytelling abilities in this new medium with her usual brilliance.”
