Picture books have come a long way, baby. Forget bound sheets of paper or even digital-text e-books. The latest reincarnation of traditional kid lit is so-called “moving picture books.” Animators from a company appropriately called Moving Picture Books are turning the kids and animals in famous (and not-so-famous) short stories into cartoon-like characters. The three- to five-minute narrated videos are available for digital download on computers, iPhones, iPods, and iPod Touches. “Mobile consumption is what we feel like the world is moving toward,” said Meg Lonon, senior v-p of Moving Picture Books and the mother who came up with the idea two years ago. “We bridge the gap between e-books and the movies. This is an entertaining, engaging option for parents who want their children to read classics or soon-to-be classics, but they want them on the go.”
 |
A screenshot from Eight Little Monkeys. |
Forget static animals, too. With Moving Picture Books like Eight Little Monkeys, hyperkinetic creatures eat, dance, and spin on the bed. In slapstick style, they also noisily and dramatically fall—getting giant red lumps on their heads, or stars circling above them.
These stories sound like short films, but Moving Picture Books officials insist that they’re not. “We hate to use the word ‘movie,’ ” said Lannon. “We actually do bring the story books to life.” A narrator, rather than the characters, does all the talking—in a user’s choice of English or Spanish voiceover. Viewers can also decide whether to display text on the screen.
So far 44 stories are available for digital download. Moving Picture Books, available for iPhones and on the MPB web site in April, officially launched in July with 38 titles owned by Anderson Press subsidiary Dalmatian Press. Now the company has a licensing agreement for some Sesame Street titles, which will be available next month. Some first-time authors’ stories will come out in April. iPhone apps for the typical three- to five-minute stories cost 99 cents now, but the longer Sesame Street Stories will be 8 to 10 minutes and will be more like $1.99. (MPB’s should be available on iTunes in the first quarter of 2010.) Two weeks ago 200 Walmart stores started selling DVDs with six stories, available in English and Spanish with a mobile version, for $9.96. And MPB: Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar is posted on YouTube.
 |
| Kids test out some of the Moving Picture Books. |
How do users like the stories? So far 124 people have written reviews of the free iPhone app for MPB: On Top of Spaghetti, typically giving it three out of five stars. The MPB features animation that accompanies kids’ voices singing, “On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese, I lost my poor meatball, when somebody sneezed.” A five-star fan, “momsera,” wrote, “I found this out of desperation waiting in the dr’s [sic] office with my kids and couldn’t be happier with it.”
Other reviewers were less charitable. One wrote of the MPB: Bible Stories: “Not worth paying for. I thought it would be several 3-5 minute bible stories, instead it was one 3-5 minute story summing up the whole bible!! :( ”
Moving Picture Books are noisy, which, depending on a parent’s point of view, can be a pro or a con. Reviewing MPB: Noah’s Ark, one fan said, “The sound is loud even on an iTouch.”
 |
| Moving Picture Books are available for digital download as well as on retail DVDs. |
Though purists may shudder, the animated books may be more interesting to kids than traditional story books, said Bob Rider, dean of the college of education, health and human sciences at the University of Tennessee. “The key word in all of this is engagement.” He thinks the stories with the text can help with word identification, fluency, and vocabulary. His team is putting together two groups of children—one that will use moving picture books and one that will read books in their natural form—to see which develops more language proficiency.
Well-known short stories include Eency Weency Spider and I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. But MPB also includes less familiar titles like titles like No More Pacifiers! and Pizza! Pizza! Pizza! The company is giving some first-time authors a chance. For example, Brad Martin, the former CEO of Saks Fifth Avenue, is coming out with an animated version of Myles’ Pesky Friends in April. Named after his five-year-old son, the story is about the iguanas, monkeys, owls, and crabs that Martin’s family sees when visiting their home in Grenada.
Martin says he likes all MPBs, not just his own. He uses any of the 15 or so MPBs he has downloaded to get his three kids—Myles and his two three-year-old brothers—to bed at the same time. “We don’t feel guilty about telling one child to please watch Eight Silly Monkeys while we read another book out loud to the other twin,” he said. He also likes how they’re “easy to use,” saying, “I am not a technophile at all.”
John Cave Osborne’s Gus and Nat: Friendship is also coming out in April. “It’s a marriage of busy parents and technology,” said Osborne, the owner of a Knoxville, Tenn., granite countertop business and the father of two-year-old triplets and an eight-year-old. “How great is it that you can have all the Moving Picture Book series on an iPhone and pull it up in a doctor’s office?” he said. Moms and dads over 40 may want to bring their bifocals: the text and images, like the kids who are looking at them, are tiny.
