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.
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.
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).
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.
Didn’t you find it frustrating, when searching for an app you’ve heard of or read about, to change your normal way, open a specific software (iTunes), which takes for ever to load, use the unfriendly search bar, only to find that the app you were actually looking for is hidden within the second page of the apps category? I know I found it frustrating many times!
Google to the rescue! our all-mighty internet supreme court, Google, has finally decided that buying apps for our iPhones and iPads is now an integral part of our lives… Nice! Moreover, Google’s decided to help us easily find that great app we’d heard about, hassle-free… Way to go Google!
To make the fun complete – this should also be possible outside of the US. Apple and Google, I hope you’re listening.
The bottom line, however, is clear – apps are here and they are here to stay!
Allright, it’s almost happening. We are soon launching Thumbelina.
Thumbelina is of course a classic story that everybody knows and when I first read it as a consideration for the Touchoo collection I thought to myself: “Was it always this scary?” She gets abducted by all kinds of big animals and almost trapped into marrying a scary mole. That’s when we knew we wanted to take the general idea of the classic story and make it into something new, something that our kids could read without having nightmares. So that is what we did and I am so proud of the result.
Thumbelina is also our first StoryBook App to be released with translations into Spanish, French, German, Italian, Hebrew, Chinese, Dutch and Japanese. I am excited to see how it is received outside of the US.
What makes the launch of Thumbelina even more special is that this is our first StoryBook App to be released on the iPad.
I really like the iPad: I love the design, the contrasts and colors are amazing, the user interface is very intuitive, the videos, the cool apps, games, the battery life that’s very decent… Should I go on? It seems like it really does have the potential to change our habits, and I can’t wait to see how this new technology is accepted by the world.
Of course it could never replace the real thing; could anything beat the smell of an actual book? The feel of it? Not for me! However, reading on the iPad can certainly add to the experience in many ways, and create a rich, exciting experience through a skillful application of interactivity.
Another amazing aspect is the friendliness to kids and to the environment: when walking past the school close to where I live the other day, I saw all those tiny little kids with their huge backpacks filled with books and I thought to myself “Go iPad!”
Let me know what you think of reading on the iPad versus reading a real book. I am very curious what your opinion is on the matter.
Remember, always feel free to spread the word about us and our upcoming release of Thumbelina, by directing your friends, colleagues, family, acquaintances and random relevant strangers to Touchoo, or share with them info about us through Facebook or Twitter.
The development of the concept of numbers with the child has a close link to the development of language, and broadly speaking – to the mental capacity to process sequences. As such, the development starts manifesting shortly after speech, when the child, in his second year, starts naming numbers, still without understanding their symbolic meaning.
This initial phase can last for a year or more, yet it is necessary for the internalization of the number sequence and the principles of counting and calculating that will follow.
In the second stage, the child begins to understand the concept of “One” and later of “Two”, around the same time as he recognizes his basic body parts (some singular and some pairs).
In the next stage, the ability to recite starts developing, as the infant internalizes the process of uniquelymatching the series of numbers he knows (initially up to three or up to five) to a series of similar objects. Reciting proficiency doesn’t mean that the infant understands the link between the last recited number and the counted quantity. Children of three to four years of age can recite up to five, and to answer the question “how many building blocks are there?” they would recount again and again, and not just say “five”. Fully understanding this link (typically in ages 4-5), testifies to the healthy ripening of the quantitative understanding and readiness to continue learning calculus.
The activities which construct this iphone application, 1 Little Boy for toddlers allow the infant recurring exposure to diverse counting and reciting experiences, in which he is exposed to the principles of number sequences, in an appropriate level of difficulty. The child can flip back the pages and visually internalize the proportion of numbers in a sequence, long before these relations can be fully integrated into his conceptual framework. Generally speaking, the visual story allows for optimal environmental learning* of the foundations of the number realm, not to mention its incorporation of the numeric factor into a content that is diverse in its own right.
Environmental learning – Learning from generalization of example cases in the child’s natural surroundings. This, as opposed to structured learning, which refers to quantitative concepts as mathematical, interrelated objects. In recent years, research in the field of mathematical teaching have proven time and again that the environmental approach is significantly better at nurturing the fundamental quantitative understanding and that it is more appropriate to implement in this case. The structured approach, conversely, might be more beneficial in more advanced stages.
Thalma ashi is a leading developmental psychologist, and a former consultant to the mathematical team of the Israel education ministry.
