Children’s entertainment has transformed so much in recent years. Hipster artists of the late ’90s have had kids of their own and, rather than settle for the Sesame Streets, Raffis and Doctors Seuss of the past, begun creating childhood entertainment all their own. The lil’uns have quasi-educational albums from They Might Be Giants (No!, Here Come The ABCs, 123s and Science), picture books from Mo Willems (Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus!, Knuffle Bunny) and daytime television in the form of Yo Gabba Gabba! Keita Takahashi, creator of the wildly popular Katamari Damacy videogames, is preparing to design schoolyard playgrounds.
As our modern creatives adapt to the youth entertainment of yore, it so follows that the classic forms of entertainment must adapt themselves to modern creators. It is with that evolutionary step in mind that Mobile Art Lab has produced PhoneBook – Popo and Momo Ride! Ride!, a traditional picturebook that incorporates a custom iPhone app inside windows of the pages:
You see, Popo and Momo are experiencing a variety of modes of transportation, always sitting near a window to the outside world, represented by the iPhone screen. The reader (or the being-read-to) gets to watch out the window as trees pass by their train, clouds outside their plane, fish outside their submarine, and more. Along with the benefit of animation, the iPhone interaction also bring music and sound effects to the book along with, most excitingly, interaction. Tilting the book affects the speed of the vehicle you’re in and tapping the screen allows you to play with the world outside your window, something kids dream about doing well into adulthood.
The iPhone interaction clearly constructs a much deeper level of immersion by allowing both the book to come alive and for the child to become a part of the imaginary world on the pages/screen. Sure, this is only a modernization of the fifty-year-old Pat The Bunny method of playing with what’s in the window of a picture book, but the interactive nature of this small innovation is certain to increase the child’s engagement exponentially. The game-like nature of the window ensures that the parent playing along will likely remain interested far longer than if they were reading their child the same story again and again (after all, I doubt many parent/guardians would be cool leaving their iPhone with their infant unattended). Unfortunately, the desire to tap and swipe the screen endlessly means this is not a book you’ll want to share with your kid before putting them down for a nap as they’ll likely be full of pep at the end of the story and want to play some more. Still, this is just the first of what I imagine will be a whole new generation of “PhoneBook”s, and bedtime stories can’t be too far behind!
