Benny is a super cute and engaging ginger cat with a fluffy tail and pointy ears. You cannot help but love him as if he was your own pet. Children, as young as 1 year old, can play hide and seek with him, choose his favorite food, pet him, make his bed and much more.
Here’s a Q&A with the author and illustrator of “Benny the cat”, Tamar Hak:
How did Benny come about?
‘Benny the cat’ is the first children’s book that I have both written and illustrated, as opposed to having only dealt with the illustration side of things up to that point. It all started when I got a call from the people at Touchoo with a proposal to write and illustrate a children’s book intended for mobile devices using a touch screen interface. I was very excited with the challenge and could not wait to get started. My goal was to come up with a simple yet fun storyline that would appeal to children everywhere, while making as much use as possible of what this interactive interface has to offer.
What inspired your idea for the book?
One of my greatest loves in life is animals. I grew up in a small house crowded with pets, the memories and experience of that have had a very positive influence on me. To this day I cannot possibly imagine myself ever living without pets of my own. Coincidentally (yet not surprisingly) one of my favorite drawing subjects is animals. I therefore decided to take this opportunity to share my love for animals with kids and at the same time provide parents with a tool for introducing a certain pet to their child.
How did you come up with Benny’s character?
I chose a cat (a kitten) to be my book’s main character, first and foremost because it is simply my favorite pet. I started off by searching the web for kitten photos whilst thinking about what its character traits might be like. I knew that the book itself was going to be simple and straight forward one so I wanted to make up for that by making Benny’s character extra interesting and likeable for both children and their parents. Finally, I decided it would be a ginger cat (I have a soft spot for ginger cats as I in fact have one at home) small, chubby and fluffy with a whimsical spark in its eyes.
What technique did you use for the illustrations?
I love illustrating by hand and one of my favorite techniques is colored pencils. In this project I used a combination of graphite and colored pencils which no doubt made it harder in the transition to digital media as well as through the animation process but I felt that it was worth the effort considering the results.
Can you list all the pets you ever had?
Cats, dogs, mice, hamsters, all kinds of parrots and birds, rabbits, guinea pigs, fish, frogs, turtles, silkworms, snails and porcupines. I think there may have been more…
What are some of your favorite children’s books?
I absolutely loved all the Moomin books by Tove Jansson, Erich Kastner, and Shel Silverstein.
About Tamar:
I grew up in the Tel aviv Area in Israel. I painted and sketched since childhood and later on studied at “Thelma Yellin” High school of arts and “Shenkar College of design”. Nowadays I work as an art director in the advertising industry and as a freelance illustrator and designer. In my spare time I like to sing, eat humus and go for long walks (not necessarily in that order).
I’m a Wannabe: Being Part of the World of Children’s Book Apps
by Tami Lehman-Wilzig
I’m the kind of children’s author who looks to life for inspiration. No ghosts or goblins for me. No wizards or witches. Real-life behavior of parents, children and animals is what’s on my radar.
So when I read a newspaper article written by a father living in a rustic village, explaining how he took his four-year old daughter on a daily walk to watch the sunset, I had an Aha moment that I quickly translated into my first early childhood book. And not just a regular, full color, illustrated book. An App book, because another article I had read on a technology start-up called Touchoo, similarly piqued my interest, plus I couldn’t get over its slogan: “Books for Little Fingers”.
Both these articles happily coincided with my impending grand-motherhood. I fondly recalled reading to my sons way back when they were in between mischief. And bedtime? Prime time for me. Nothing was more cuddly and warm than having two tired heads leaning on me while I read out loud. But a grandmother reading to her grandson every night? That’s charting old/new territory. Then again, so are children’s book apps. So I embraced the challenge, mapping out a story about a tired sun at the end of a work-filled day.
I first determined that a lilting cadence was necessary to draw in the reader. I carefully crafted each word, each sentence. In the process I could feel my unborn grandson’s eyes tracking the illustrations with the voice-over text. I could sense his small, nimble fingers patting folding flower petals, swiping a curling cat’s tail and tapping ants walking through sandy trails. My excitement grew as I realized how this new, interactive world of reading would allow me to virtually be by his side nightly, teaching the ways of nature – his and that of the universe – while hearing my voice read to him out loud. Yes, the ability of parents and grandparents to record their voice is another benefit of children’s book apps.
Today, my book is in production and my 8-month old grandson is a work in progress. He’s an inquisitive little fellow who likes to poke, touch and feel, not to mention follow sounds and people’s voices. By the time he turns One he’ll certainly be using his tactile talents and I know he’s app to be all ears when his grandmother shows him how The Sun Goes to Bed on her iPad.
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Tami Lehman-Wilzig is an award-winning children’s book author. Her ninth and tenth books are scheduled to come out on September 1, 2011 – Green Bible Stories for Children and Nathan Blows Out the Hanukkah Candles. The Sun Goes to Bed is Tami’s first children’s book app.
Blocks. Chairs. Macaroni. Mounted fish. If Benny Willoughby sees it, he says hello to it. At first, his parents are amused, but before Benny’s “Hello Week” is over, his mother wonders, “When will all this hello-ing stop?”
“Hello Week” is a great story for the read-to-me audience, and, since Benny says hello to many common household items, it has a wonderful point-and-say interactivity.
Here’s a Q&A with the author and illustrator of “Hello Week,” William Walsh and Kim Edge:
How did you begin working on Hello Week?
Kim: Bill and I started working together at Brown University back in 2000. We worked in fund-raising, producing publications. I worked as a designer and Bill as a writer. We talked a bit about collaborating on a children’s story, and one day Bill emailed me the text for “Hello Week.” I found little free time for my illustration work the six years I worked at Brown, and it wasn’t until I moved to Austin, Texas, in 2006 to take a part-time position as senior designer for The University of Texas at Austin, that I came across the text again. I found it buried in a box in the garage. I quickly emailed Bill and asked if he was still interested in my taking a swing at the illustration part of things, and to my luck he was.
Six months later, I finished illustrating and designing the book, and passed it to Bill who began searching for a publisher. We got many nibbles, and finally in 2010 we received the exciting news that Touchoo was interested in turning “Hello Week” into a Book App. It was ten years after we started our plan to work together.
What inspired the story and the look of its illustrations?
William: I like to use repetition in writing, which is something that kids also like to do. When they’re little, they get a hold of a word and they explore every facet of it. With “Hello Week,” I wanted to tell the story of a boy having fun with a word. Hello is the first word of his vocabulary, which is fitting, but of course his repetitive greetings drive his mother crazy.
Kim: My daughter was only one when I started to work on the book, her favorite books were the tiny ones. I noticed that most were square and wanted a small rectangle book. When I started sketches for the tiny space that allotted, I realized I had to zoom in on the objects and crop the people in order for the little ones to be clear about the new vocabulary.
How is designing an e-book/book app different from designing a conventional print book?
Kim: When I began to design the book, e-books barely existed, but I happened to envision the book as a small printed book almost exactly app size. To get the illustrations ready for iPad / iPhone / iPod Touch, I re-did every illustration and hand lettered the text. In its new electronic format the type needed to fit on each page with the illustration.
What are the educative qualities of “Hello Week?”
William: I think the way the story calls out familiar objects will help kids see and say what they encounter in the story and in the world around them. I think rhyming is a technique that helps young kids acquire nuance with language. Rhyming also helps them associate sounds with the written word, and that helps them later as readers and spellers.
Kim: The book is perfect for young ones, learning to speak and then again for kindergarten age kids, learning to read.
Were there any surprises in this collaboration?
Kim: Rejection doesn’t rattle Bill.
William: I was surprised by Kim’s initial sketches because they were so post-modern. The reader didn’t see the faces of the characters—Benny or his parents. I think that’s a really new treatment of characters in a children’s story, and it helps to focus on the objects that Benny says hello to.
What are some of your favorite children’s stories?
Kim: Growing up I had two books, “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” and “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.” If you came to my house I would beg you to read them to me. I love reading “Goodnight Moon” and all of the “Henry and Mudge” books to my girls.
William: I like all the Dr. Suess books. And all of our kids really like the Mercer Mayer little critter books.
About Kim and Bill:
Kim Edge: I spent my early childhood years drawing with chalk in the dark, riding my bike down sand hills, and doing gymnastics. I was born and raised in old mill town Rhode Island. I left at 18 to study art in NYC, first at NYU then Parsons. My paintings have shown in RI, Texas, and in NYC at The New Yorker Magazine Gallery. I’m a designer by day and have worked at The New Yorker Magazine, Travel and Leisure Magazine, Brown University, and UT Austin. I live in Austin with my husband Harold, two daughters, Annalee and Rell, my dog Boo, and Lo Lo the cat.
William Walsh: I’m the father of four children, ages three, six, ten, and twelve. My wife teaches first grade, and I work in communications at the Museum of Science, Boston. My short stories have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. My novel Without Wax (Casperian Books) was published in 2008, and a book derived texts called Questionstruck (Keyhole Press) appeared in 2009. I recently edited a fiction anthology called RE:Telling (Ampersand Books), which features work from thirty writers re-working storylines from movies, television, literature, comic books, video and mythology.
Although he usually prefers Touchoo’s storybook-apps over other apps (really, he does!), I have to admit that he will play with, literally, just about anything. This is why I find it really important to have only kid-friendly apps on these devices he loves so much .
With over 350,000 apps in the App Store though, it’s hard to find those Apps that are both suitable and preferably also educational for him. A while ago I discovered the FREE App by Moms with Apps, which I find to be super-useful for finding quality, age appropriate and family-friendly apps. It features screenshots and summaries of over 600 children’s Apps, which are regularly updated and added to, so you get all the current information to your iPhone’s virtual doorstep. Oh, yes, it’s very easy to use, which is all important.
I am sitting on the couch with my 20 months old son and feeling a bit nervous. For me, this is the ultimate test if we did a good job on our newest Book App.
After working on Benny for a long time and feeling so proud and excited during the entire process, it now comes down to the nitty gritty bluntest truth of all, my son’s opinion.
Will he like Benny? Will he say “again!” over and over until I get sick of it? Let’s find out…
I put the iPad in his hands, he turns it on and immediately sees there is a new App on the horizon.
He can’t or refuses to make a puzzle but he knows how to maneuver the iPad and iPhone like it’s nobody’s business.
He starts playing, busily flipping pages, dragging and dropping, sliding, petting, tickling, searching and yes laughing… phf.. what a relief!
He doesn’t like it… he loves it! “Again..Again..Again” Aaah…music to my ears.
Our cute little Benny is obviously ready to make his debut and I can’t wait to hear some more feedback from all of you mothers out there!
What an exciting week! We were chosen as one of the lucky ten most promising start ups to present at the TWS Conference 2010.
Here are some pics of our CEO Omer Ginor presenting Touchoo, what we are about and our future plans, that will be posted soon also on the About Us Page.
Omer Ginor CEO of Touchoo presenting at the TWS Conference 2010
And then, to our surprise and honour, we won!!! Here are Omer and KerenB receiving the sought after award.
It’s been a very good week and I can’t wait to see what exciting things are in store for us next week.
Our storybook App Thumbelina is getting great reviews, which is a good feeling. An even better feeling is when parents write us to tell us about their children’s positive reactions to our App. But the coolest feeling ever is when a parent sends us a video showing us their child’s reaction to our App, like India’s mother did.
Check out this video and see what I mean for yourself.
Reading a book to your child is an important part of his or her development. It not only advances the child on a social and emotional level, but also has a huge influence on his or her reading habits, passion for books, and literacy. A Recent study has shown that the decline in reading is affecting America’s culture, economy, and civic life as well as children’s educational achievement. This could mean that there is a direct connection between reading books, and the academic success of our children and their subsequent success as an adult. Personally, I just love that intimate moment between my son and me at story time. There is always magic and creativity in the air which makes for a beautiful bonding experience.
In the last few years, we’ve seen a growth in the frequency of adults reading to children. However, with the digital media now playing such a significant role in our lives, preschoolers are increasingly bombarded from all sides by fast and gripping stimuli, most often very superficial and barren of real value. Research shows that these stimuli induce shorter attention spans in children. So we see some light in the state of reading, but the outlook is not yet bright.
Touchscreens has become a very convenient way for us to consume media. It is very clear by now that our little ones are also attracted to these devices. It is so easy for them to use… They intuitively know what to do, and you see babies as young as 9 months old mastering the control over a touchscreen interface. That’s truly incredible.
With interactive storybooks we are embarking on a new era of ‘active learning’, i.e. learning through doing and not through being taught. This is very exciting for us to be in this field, since it is exactly these kinds of book that have what it takes to attract today’s children to enjoy story time once again.
Reading an interactive story book is nothing short of revolutionary. After hundreds of years of reading still, printed books, the interactive storybook touches on many more developmental aspects and uses many more kinds of engagement than the printed storybook.
Does this mean that storybook apps and picture book apps on touchscreen can actually replace the printed book? I do not think so nor hope so. However, I do think they can be an amazing addition to the printed kind and together they have the potential to bridge the increasing gap between kids and reading (the numbers are quite scary).
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
-Ancient Chinese Proverb
Children are doers. They are explorers and makers. They fully experience their whole environments by holding, pushing, pulling, tweaking, and fully interacting with the things they come in contact with in order to understand the world in which they move through each day. They need to touch.
Children touch, feel, and play with their entire environment: the food they eat, the ground they walk on, and all their learning tools. Books are no exception.
Interactivity is nothing new in the world of books. As the publishing world has grown in the way of children’s materials over the years, more and more “touchable” books have found their way into the eager hands of little people waiting to explore them. A child can now readily find a book that will satisfy their need to touch. For now they can turn the pages with gusto, lift flaps, look in mirrors, feel a smooth, bumpy, or scratchy page, play peek-a-boo, and even zip zippers.
This kind of play is not only fun for a child’s growing mind and body, but truly and utterly essential. If a child’s mind is to grow to its full potential, the child must be given ample opportunity to explore her world in order to understand it.
A child needs to fully explore her world in all its wonder: to climb trees, to finger paint, to play in the mud, to practice and develop motor skills in big and small ways, to hear wide varieties of language and music, to listen and be listened to, and if new technologies are part of her, her family’s life, and that of her future, to explore them in ways that are developmentally appropriate.
Now, as new technologies are emerging, we find ourselves in the most fortunate time and place in history where children can touch books in ways they never have been able to before. With the latest in interactivity, such as iPhone and iPad apps for children, not only can a child read a story in a way that satisfies their need to touch, but their touches can now translate into the ability to control those stories: to enter characters, make them talk or sing, and even control the storyline.
We know that children learn by doing. With picking up, touching and truly interacting with the things, books and all, in their environment, children are able to most fully learn from them. In this way, they develop deeper understanding of their world. In turn, they can then take that understanding to other areas of their life so they can do, create, and interact even more as they grow. What an exciting time to be a child!
If you’ve so far put off getting your little one our first StoryBook “1 Little Boy” because you prefer getting a feel of things before buying them (we feel the same way about this), you can now try out our LITE version FOR FREE!
Really, I find it hard to believe you haven’t gotten it yet, but if you haven’t – I have no doubt you’d want to own the full version after you get a feel of the app with this Lite one.
