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).
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.
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.
Toddlers are at a stage where they are learning their language communication skills and experimenting with word meanings using visual and auditory senses. Reading to children while they are still in the 0-4 age range is critical in their overall development. Today there are many tools for toddlers to use such as interactive books or even computer programs with interactive stories.
Sitting down and having a toddler watch a parent as he/she reads to them is a classic approach. Bringing a story to life using hand gestures, voice, and facial expressions to spark the imagination, encourages creativity in children. This does not mean one has to completely dismiss the use of the interactive books available today. In fact, these tools with interactive stories can actually be helpful in giving the child a complete visual sense of the characters in them.
Toddlers have a very short attention span, and it takes great skill to keep them rooted to one spot for very long. For those new parents who think they have failed each time “junior’ disappears from view during storytelling, don’t fret about it. It’s a natural trait in children of this age group, which is why interactive books and interactive stories can be great in terms of keeping their attention for at least 30 minutes at a time before they move on to explore other attractive endeavors.
The bits and pieces of time that can be spent in exposing toddlers to language and reading material greatly improve the social and educational skills of the child. 1 By using interactive books or tools with interactive stories, the toddler improves his/her vocabulary and develops language comprehension long before he/she can even read a single word or sentence.
Reading words while pointing them out to the toddlers helps them to connect the sounds to words. Some interactive books actually have voice recordings that accompany them so that they can move step by step through the book along with the sounds they hear. Interactive stories can vary from voice taped whole stories, to simply pop-up pictures with large words along the bottom to help them with the visual connections.
The visual connection between sounds and words incorporates the identification of letters of the alphabet as well as number recognition. There are many interactive books that contain a complete set of interactive stories, building blocks with letters and numbers, or even push-button type devices that can keep many a toddler busy for long periods of time. Parents who wish to use these tools should take time to sit with the children and “play” with these devices to familiarize the toddler with association of words and numbers.
Another way to read to toddlers is to use the simpler interactive books that are packaged with little games. These games provide for more than 30 minutes of fun for both adult and toddler alike and can actually be an alternative to the more expensive computer programs that contain interactive stories.
The bonding time between parent and child is also an important aspect when a parent takes time to read to his/her child. 2 Toddlers are greedy for attention and need constant supervision. Reading to toddlers using interactive stories, no matter how short, is the most unforgettable experience because it was Dad or Mom who shared the moment. The story itself is long forgotten by the time they move on to the next toy, but the experience stays with them. As they progress, they will develop the habit of picking out interactive books on their own to bring forward to their parents to read to them.
Toddlers also like to have adventure in their lives, and when a parent reads from interactive books where the characters are interesting, they can actually pretend to be one of these characters. They can dress a toddler up like a pirate from one of the interactive stories they read together, and find hidden treasures in the kitchen cookie jar. This makes the whole experience all the more unforgettable, and the child’s creative nature is enhanced as well.
In an age where internet chat has become synonymous to the concept of “interactive” it is easy to overlook the simplicity of reading to toddlers the old fashioned way. With the availability of interactive books and tools that provide hundreds of interactive stories and games in one complete box, bonding time with the little ones can be forgotten. There is no replacement for the moments spent reading and learning with one’s child. The experience is more valuable than all the expensive gadgets money can buy.
