Have you wished Benny the Cat a “good morning” yet?
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).
Why I Wrote “The Sun Goes to Bed”
(or)
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.
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.
This was Keren E keeping in Touch(oo)
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.
This was Keren E keeping in Touch (oo)
