Print Books Never Lose Battery Life at Bedtime

The  Joan Ganz Cooney Center has come out with some interesting studies about print books and e-books, and their peppy cousin the enhanced e-book. The results, which you can read at Digital Book World, are significant not only for the learning they show among young readers, but also for the perceptions parents have about the way young people read. Look for a complete report on the survey by the end of this summer.

There seems to be a bit of a disconnect.


One study showed that kids, ranging in age from 3 to 6 years, preferred reading an e-book to a paper book. And it looked at their comprehension rates, showing no difference between the paper format and the digital one. This study was small but is one of the first of its kind to attempt to determine if there is a preference or difference in how kids take in stories.

When you add the enhanced e-books like picture book apps into the mix, allowing for more finger swiping and tip tapping, comprehension rates drop, the study shows. Food for thought for teachers incorporating picture book apps into the classroom, but also great fodder for app producers trying to stay true to book apps as learning tools for young readers.

In another Cooney Center study, taking the pulse of 1,200 parents, it might come as no surprise to learn that parents prefer print books over digital when they read with their children. But the interesting tidbit here is that they believe their children do too. (Parents, see above study.)

I can't disagree with the Old Guard in this survey. And though I don't want to be lumped in with any of the hysteria around parents worrying that tablets are turning their readers into zombies, I'll be the first to admit that I still love snuggling up on a pillow with my kids and sharing a paper book. While I am fine with my kids reading a novel or picture book app on the iPad during the day, there is something intrusive about having a screen on at bedtime.

Many of us spend a big part of our day policing screen time and knocking our kids off the electronic toys and out onto the green stuff growing in the yard. So while it's good to see studies that show positives around children's engagement with digital books, it will likely take a while for parents to get behind the notion of a glowing screen on when the stars come out.

What about you? What do your kids prefer? And how do you read to them at bedtime?

Betsy Bird's Top Picture Books Poll and Apps

I love lists. Making them, marking things off of them, threatening to put my children on them. Lists for top movies and songs are always helpful when I'm feeling indecisive about what to play. And lists for books are precious for addled brains like my own when I'm at the library or bookstore and feeling overwhelmed by all my choices.

So when Betsy Bird announced a new poll on her Fuse #8 blog for top picture books and chapter books, I was very excited. It's fun to consider what stories stand the test of time, and what new authors and books are essential to any bookshelf. And for dotMomming, I want to know if the best books for kids are becoming available in digital format.

The current poll repeats the enormous feat Betsy pulled off in 2009. Here are the top 10 picture books that made the list then:

1. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (1963)
2. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown (1947) 
3. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (1979)
4. The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats (1962)
5. Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems (2003)
6. Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey (1941)
7. Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson (1955)
8. Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans (1939)
9. Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag (1928)
10. Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale by Mo Willems (2004)

Way back in 2009, the iPad was only a glimmer in Apple's eye. It wasn't released until April 2010, so the idea of enhanced picture books was still a ways off. But what about now? How many of these top picture books can you download in the App Store today?

Where the Wild Things Are? Nope. And judging by Maurice Sendak's feelings about e-books, it would take a lot of convincing to bring about an app.

Goodnight Moon? What you find in app format is not the picture book. Very Hungry Caterpillar? Here's the first of these top 10 books to appear in the App Store, though it's not the picture book but rather a math game featuring the adorable caterpillar and Eric Carle's lovely fruit. The Snowy Day? Nope.

Mo Willems' Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus arrived in app format in October 2011 as Don't Let the Pigeon Run This App! (Disney, $6.99). Rather than provide the same content as the paper book, Willems' app lets young readers create their own pigeon stories again and again. Willems is clearly committed to traditional reading and ventured into digital books reluctantly, describing e-books in USAToday, "With all their bells and whistles and word jumbles and assorted narrative killers, after we turn them on, they don't need us."

Make Way for Ducklings app? Nope. Harold and the Purple Crayon (Trilogy Studios, $6.99) is available in a lovely app format that made the CYBILS app finalist list this year. Madeline? Nope. Millions of Cats? Nope. Knuffle Bunny? Not yet, but there might be hope.

"I didn't want to be some reactionary luddite," Willems says in the USAToday interview. "I'm not saying everything electronic is evil."

Check out the rules for nominating your picks for the top 100 picture books and chapter books on the Fuse#8 blog and then email your favorites to Betsy Bird at Top100Poll@gmail.com. The deadline is 11:59 p.m. Eastern on April 15, 2012.

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Happy Digital Learning Day!

Today marks the first ever national celebration of Digital Learning Day, which is an orchestrated effort to promote the innovative use of technology in America's classrooms. What does that mean and who is behind it?

Digital Learning Day is meant to encourage teachers, parents, and students to try something new using technology. This means showcasing success such as students' Scratch programs, kicking off project-based learning by letting students present video book reports, or simply sitting down with digital books and observing how young readers interact with the stories. The New York Times blogs about its 40-odd years covering technology and education, and encourages everyone to try three new things involving digital learning today.

There will be webcasts. There will be virtual town hall meetings. There will be Facebook-ing and Twitter-ing and all sorts of conversations going on about engaging technology for learning. And there will be heavy hitters, as the Alliance for Excellent Education has partnered with Google, USA Today, Intel, and other major players like Kaplan, Scholastic, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Parents and teachers can make good use of toolkits and contests to motivate and engage their kids.

So why all the hoopla? Because so many questions surrounding the good use of technology remain:  how schools can first of all access digital technology and then harness it. How we can move our kids from the addictive fun of Plants vs Zombies and into engaged online learning that taps their creativity and opens the doors to real mastery and student success.

Because technology, while influencing our lives on a day-to-day basis at home and work, too often stops short of the classroom door.

Part 2: Digital Literacy and Learning to Read

This is the second in a series of posts in which we'll hear from Patrick Cox, a Ph.D. candidate in the childhood studies program at Rutgers University. Patrick taught a summer course on learning to read in the digital age, and he will repeat it in the fall and spring. In exploring how digital readers are impacting early literacy development, Patrick is engaging his students in better understanding technology and how young children are learning about it and with it.

DotMomming: The digital natives born into the iPad world are experiencing reading and learning in a whole new way. I don't mean this as a plug for Apple, just in the sense that books are a fluid thing now. Kids can toddle over to the bookshelf to sit down with a paper book, or they can tap their fingers on a reading tablet and read a digital one. Is one experience better than the other?

Patrick Cox: Of course not! Certainly the experiences are different from each other, but it gets a bit sticky to ascribe words like “better” or “worse” to one experience over another. Apart from whatever text is being read in each medium, both media also teach valuable skills to young readers. “Book awareness” starts very young, and the book is itself a technology anyone in the United States really needs to learn how to use.

We don’t really think of it, but at some point we had to learn the difference between the cover of a book and the back of a book, or which direction to turn the pages, or that we read from left to right. These are all skills that are developed from a very young age and will serve us throughout our lives . . . unless books completely disappear, which I don’t think is likely at all.

Similarly, reading tablets and other hi-tech manifestations of books teach other useful skills we might call “tech awareness.” As unromantic as it sounds, these days we need to learn a connection between pushing buttons and things happening on a screen, or “swyping” a screen to move an image. In my state of Pennsylvania, naming and having some understanding of how to use computer parts like keyboards, a mouse, a touchpad, and a cell phone is part of the pre-kindergarten education standards. The fact is, like it or not, it behooves us all to learn how to use these new devices.

I’m very interested in this phrase “digital native.” I’ve heard it before and understand what is meant. But there’s an implication about it, it seems, that there’s something natural about kids’ connection to technology that people who aren’t “natives” can’t ever fully learn or become a part of. “Native” means some people are “not native,” so there’s a separation being made in the phrase between children and adults. “You grow up with it or you don’t; you’re a part of it, or you aren’t.” Children and adolescents have been classed as “separate” in different realms before. (There’s actually a book about teenagers called “A Tribe Apart,” another term that both primitivizes children and separates “them” from “us” – the presumably less primitive adults.)

I’ve heard children’s picture book apps on iPads described as perfect for young children because “kids these days are wired differently.” I think there’s a growing belief that children “just know this tech stuff” as if it’s not learned but natural to them, as if children are somehow at one with technology and its accompanying gadgets; “wired differently” as if part of the computer’s circuitry.

What’s troubling in all this is the perception that using reading tablets and other techie gadgets is somehow not reading. And that the gadgets – the digital books and apps and so forth – are cutting us off from “the natives.” We often hear a critique of e-readers along the lines of, “Yes, but it’s just not the same as curling up with a book and turning the pages.” People talk about the feel of paper, the smell of books. Indeed, a Kindle is not the same. But I’m not sure the difference is such as to affect a young reader’s comprehension or engagement with the story being read or their connection with the characters. In other words, reading hasn’t changed; just the device has changed. But that seems to be fraught with a lot of other meanings for people.

Author-Illustrator Elizabeth O. Dulemba Conjures Up Adorable App with "Lula's Brew"

In getting to understand picture book apps, we've heard from app developers about what it takes to bring their ideas to market. But what about the author-artists themselves? What's it like to see your illustrations and stories come to life as a digitally animated book?

DotMomming reached out to Elizabeth O. Dulemba, author-illustrator of the darling picture book app Lula's Brew. Aside from illustrating over a dozen traditional books, she is the Illustrator Coordinator for the Southern region of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, an adjunct professor of illustration at the University of Georgia, and also sits on the board of the Georgia Center for the Book. And we cannot overlook this incredibly cool resume footnote: she created the laser show on the side of Georgia's Stone Mountain one summer (which I think I attended back in 1991 when I worked for a South Carolina newspaper).

DotMomming: You have a strong background in traditional books and art, but you've begun to dip your toes in the land of picture book apps. How's the water?

Elizabeth O. Dulemba: Interesting. I've always been a bit of a geek -- taught myself html, do my own website, illustrate digitally. So when e-books came along, of course I was intrigued. I love that we have this new media in which to share our stories, often in interactive new ways. It opens even more possibilities for storytelling.

DM: Lula's Brew is a gorgeously illustrated book. What is your creative process in making your art? And how does it look to you on the iPad, Nook, and other digital formats?

EOD: Thank you! I usually start with pencil sketches which I scan, arrange, and then color digitally (mostly in Photoshop). I'm thrilled by how Lula looks on these devices -- exactly as I intended, with light from behind. The viewer can see every brush stroke, every nuance of color. Fantastic!

DM: How does this compare to the paper books you've produced? Do you prefer one medium over the other?

EOD: I originally got into this business because I love books. Paper and cardboard and color. I will never lose my love for the turned page. So while I love digital formats, I will first and foremost always want to hold a finished book in my hands.

DM: Can you take a moment to talk about the production process with Lula's Brew? How long did it take you to go from "ah-ha" moment with the story idea to "wow" moment when you could download the app? How does this compare with traditional?

EOD: Lula's Brew had a tumultuous journey. I actually created the story and the dummy years before. One of the illustrations even won me a Grand Prize in the SmartWriters competition. And although it got close, the story was never picked up by a major publishing house. When apps came along, I searched my archives for something that I could adapt, and Lula was the one. It had received great feedback, was short, funny, the sketches were done...

But with a Halloween theme, I had a short window in which to complete it. That was two weeks of late nights, and then I sent my files to my app developer. I did a voice recording in a mock sound studio at his house, he put it all together and submitted to Apple. The app was live two weeks later - just before Halloween.

Traditional publishing is a completely different animal. I usually have months to a year to illustrate a book, and of course, I don't have to record a soundtrack. I'm also working under contract with a publisher. The app was on my own.

DM: As an illustrator of traditional books and now with app experience under your belt, could you speak in general terms about profit margins. For a picture book to be deemed a success, it needs to sell about 10,000 copies. Lula's Brew, which was released in April 2010 and retails for $2.99 in the App Store, has already marked more than 10,000 downloads. Despite the lower price, are your profit margins better than for your traditional paper books? Can you elaborate?

EOD: Lula's Brew has done remarkably well in downloads, however the profit margin is still nowhere near a traditional book contract. It's done better than I thought, but I currently wouldn't look to apps as a true money-making venture. Especially now that the field is growing so crowded. The advantage I had of having one of the first picture book apps out there is no longer, so marketing is yet again the grand beastie challenge.

DM: Could you take a moment to gaze into your crystal ball? What do you see as the future for picture books in five, ten years? Of course digital does not have to wipe out print -- as with movies, there's still room for big-screen film experiences along side video-watching at home. Do you see the market preferring one over the other?

EOD: I do think digital picture books will cut into the paper book market, however I don't see it replacing it. Nowhere close. Picture books are still a child's first foray into reading, into loving books, and I don't think parents will be eager to replace that experience with electronic devices. Yes, iPhones are great on the fly, but not as much at bedtime. And the prices of various devices are still too high to make them accessible to all families.

I see the two media working together over the next few years, giving our young ones so many options, they become bigger readers than ever. Doesn't that sound nice?

DM: A worry I have as the mother of young kids is that picture book apps can sometimes blur the lines between book and movie, or even book and game. What are your thoughts about young readers and their early literacy experiences with apps vs. traditional books?

EOD: I agree with your concern. I think it's important for parents to introduce books not only for reading, but as a concept. The world flies at us these days, and children need to know they can find refuge in a simple book, in a story that uses their mind as the interactive element.

DM: What's next for you? Are you illustrating more picture book apps? Are you writing them as well? What about traditional books? What do you hope to be doing three years from now?

EOD: I don't have any picture book apps in progress right now. In my opinion, it's not efficient from a budget standpoint to spend time on them from scratch. It's just too dicey as to whether or not they'll earn enough revenue. Truly, I think the best use of the media is to bring out-of-print picture books back to life -- giving them a new audience. Although, I am curious to see how Lula's Brew does as a Nook Book through Barnes & Noble. Maybe that will change my mind. It's still too new to tell.

I currently have a new picture book dummy being shopped by my agent to traditional publishing houses, as well as a middle-grade novel. In three years, I hope to have them published and be creating more!

Does Borders' Failure Mark the End of the Traditional Book?

Stopped by our gasping Borders bookstore yesterday to check out the fire sale. Everything was marked down 20 percent. And though I am typically more of a 50-to-75-percent-off kind of gal, in the end a sale is a sale, no?

As I picked up early readers for my little guy and some fun new titles for my older kids, I couldn't help but feel like this was a real turning point. In my mind, the death of Borders marks the end of the book as we know it.
I got this sense that, as the stacks and stacks of hardback Olivia and Pinkalicious books were being pushed out the door, so too was the notion of hardback books themselves.

It was spring 2009 when Borders decided to pull CDs from the shelves. Why? Because of competition from iTunes. We were downloading our music instead of popping it into the CD player. And at garage sales across the nation we saw great deals on CD racks and other storage systems.

Buying those hardback books yesterday felt like a quaint exercise, even though I have been doing it every week over at our local Indie bookstore, 57th Street Books. Thumbing through the stacks of Junie B. Jones and Ivy and Bean yesterday felt a lot like when I'm at a flea market and poking around in the piles of cassette tapes.

I still love the feel of a traditional book in my hands. And I love curling up in our cushy old chair and turning the pages of a picture book with my kindergartner. But I think he would be perfectly fine if we snuggled in together in the glow of an iPad.

Book 'Em, Danno

Interesting story in Publisher's Weekly's Industry News today about "dynamic, interactive multimedia content" for kids. Or in other words, the picture books of tomorrow.

Speaking at Digital Book World, four publishers who have already staked a claim in the great digital book frontier talked about rapidly changing technology and what it means to the publishing world as more and more books are going digital.

I found humor in how each identified himself on the panel. Are they book publishers? Not in the traditional sense. More like a “mobile and tablet publisher,” as one defined his business.

The question of quality is always what interests me, and Rick Richter of Ruckus Media Group has the most interesting comments. He referred to picture book apps and this new medium as "books you can play with and games you can read."

Richter said, “there are 30,000 kids’ apps in the App Store, and about 27,000 of them are horrible. We hope to take that curator's role and let parents know what’s makes a great app and an excellent experience for their kids. We want people to take this space seriously and respect kids.”

Let's hope he puts his money where his mobile, interactive body opening through which food is taken in is.

Daphne, Dressing Up, and Parenting Online

Parenting is hard enough. Taking it to the Web? That's a whole different can o' worms.

A Missouri mom's recent post about her 5-year-old son's Halloween costume has drawn a tremendous response from parents and others -- and not just for his choice in being Daphne from Scooby Doo.

On her blog Nerdy Apple Bottom, the Mo Mom wrote,

"If you think that me allowing my son to be a female character for Halloween is somehow going to ‘make’ him gay then you are an idiot. Firstly, what a ridiculous concept. Secondly, if my son is gay, OK. I will love him no less. Thirdly, I am not worried that your son will grow up to be an actual ninja so back off."

The post, which features a photo of her son in his bright orange and purple costume complete with pink boots, has gone viral, generating over a million hits and more than 38,000 comments. Mom was interviewed by phone on CNN’s “American Morning,” saying she and her husband were “flabbergasted” by the response.

Various media outlets have now weighed in, not to mention all the mothers and others with strong opinions.

Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams hilariously addresses the mom's post, saying "This is how it's done, folks."

"It should be a no-brainer that 5-year-old boy who dresses like Daphne one day a year is not automatically gay or transgendered -- although obviously, if he had wanted to be Velma, he'd be a lesbian. The point is, as the mom blogger beautifully expresses it, so what?. . ."

But Carline Howard over at Forbes.com isn't so supportive.

"Her anger at the mean mommies is valid. But she’s taken to the blogosphere with her rants (people can be mean, even to children! traditional gender distinctions aren’t fair!) and his photo at the expense of her “worrier” son’s privacy."

This entire kerfuffle reminds me of a children's picture book called "King & King" (Tricycle Press, 2002) that was attacked for "promoting a gay agenda" and sexualizing characters for children. But what the book boils down to for me is less about homosexuality than about teaching tolerance. Buy it now.

I agree with Nerdy Apple Bottom that her son did "rock that wig." And obviously her post struck a chord across the country. So while many of us support the notion that "it takes a village," this Missouri Mom seems to have gotten a much larger village than she ever dreamed possible.

A New Form of Storytelling, Both Online and Off

The New York Times Sunday Book Review takes an interesting look at a new beast on the scene in children's literature: books that use an online component to engage and expand the reading experience.

These books are bridging the online and off-line reading experience, in some cases using the Internet to propel the plot forward. Readers go to websites mentioned in the book's pages for information or "bonus" material.

The concept sounds engaging, but it seems a little clunky in many ways.

If your child is still reading the paper page, she's going to have to shift from traditional book to computer and back again. But if she has made the move to an e-reader, the experience seems to be more fluid.

Says the Times:

". . . with the rise of e-readers and other tablet devices like Apple’s iPad, I have to imagine that some author is hard at work creating a fully digital experience that combines text, video, animation and data. Books, movies and video games will all contribute to this new form of storytelling, and I would not be surprised if it happens to children’s and young adult literature first. We may scoff at so much gimmickry, but what adults call gimmickry kids call something else: awesome."

Teens Are Reading, But Just In a Different Way

The kids are all right.

At least, that's what I took away from a recent Washington Post story about young people's reading habits.

The article looks at recreational reading in the age of Wii and XBox and real-time Tweeting. And what it says was a bit of a comfort to the part of me that wants to write books for this audience: They are reading.

And it confirms what many of us are beginning to wrap our brains around: They're reading books in digital forms.

"It's not that they're reading less; they're reading in a different way," Kim Patton, president of the Young Adult Library Services Association, says in the Post article.

The story refers to a detailed analysis into the trend on reading for fun - in books, newspapers and magazines. Researcher Sandra Hofferth of the University of Maryland has looked at the daily time-use diaries of a nationally representative sample of children 12 to 18.

The Post reports the following: Pleasure reading dropped 23 percent from 2003 to 2008, from 65 minutes a week to 50 minutes a week - with the greatest falloff for those ages 12 to 14.

So where's the bright side? The Post gives Patton's answer:

"They could be reading on the cellphone, in games, on the Web, on the computer. It doesn't mean they're not reading, but they're not reading using the printed page."

Children's Books, Authors, & Apps, Oh My!

Digital picture books have arrived on the scene, and I am trying to understand what it means for aspiring picture book authors and illustrators. So I contacted David K. Park, co-founder of MeeGenius, a publisher of digital picture books for the iPad, iPod Touch, and the iPhone. I asked him how the whole process works.

“You would submit your manuscript,” David explains. “Our editors would review it. If we agree to publish it, we would enhance it with audio playback and word highlighting, and create the personalization tool for the text. We
 would then make the book available on the web, iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad in days.”

Days? He must have meant to say months.

“This process would be weeks instead of 18 months to bring a traditional book to market.”

Okay, so what’s the catch for authors and illustrators? We must have to pay to bring our stories to life, no?

“We are not currently charging authors and illustrators to enhance and distribute their books," David says. "We understand they are plunging into this paradigm, so we want to be as supportive as possible.

“We offer 30 percent royalty on the net price of a book. For example, for a $1.99 book purchased on iTunes, Apple received 30 percent of that, which leaves $1.40. Authors and illustrators received 30 percent of that $1.40, or $0.42. So if an author/illustrator creates a book that gets downloaded 10,000 times, they received $4,200.”

That 30 percent would be split between an author and an illustrator, so for picture book authors, that’s about 15 percent, or in this example, $0.21.

How does that compare with the traditional model? According to Harold Underdown’s Purple Crayon website, for a traditional 32-page picture book priced at $16,

“Half of the $16 is the wholesaler and bookseller's part--their overhead and profits. On average, the publisher receives $8, or perhaps a little more. Assuming that the publisher does a print run of 10,000 copies (this is fairly typical), of that $8.00,
• $3.20 is overhead
• 
$1.60 is the royalty to author and illustrator

• $1.76 is the cost of paper, printing, and binding (binding is about half of that)

• $0.64 is the cost of preparing the plates
This leaves 80 cents profit per book, assuming all goes well and that the entire printing is sold. And assuming, on the other hand, no subsidiary rights income, which would increase the amount of profit.”

Let's point that out again: That $1.60 is split between author and illustrator, so for the writer, we're talking about $0.80 per book sold. Compared with about $0.21 in the e-book example. So how can an author hope to come out ahead selling digital picture books for $1.99 online?

It remains to be seen how these markets will play out. One thing to keep in mind is that not every traditional picture book is going to sell 10,000 copies. Many do not even come close. While for the digital book, the market is very different.

“There are currently 75 million iPhone, iPod Touches, and iPads in the United States,” David says, “so even a small fraction of that market is very large.”

Oh, The Places You (and Your iPad) Will Go!

Reading an AOL News story today that 13 of the 16 top book applications for the iPad are children's titles, I began getting a little light-headed. That time, "somewhere down the road," when kids will be reading picture books on handheld computers and we'll all be flying jetpacks to work, well, it's here. Mostly.

But I still couldn't wrap my brain around what it all means. So I got in touch with Oceanhouse Media, the publisher of the Dr. Seuss apps that are among the most popular downloads. Surely he could calm me down about the iPad, picture book apps, e-books, and what this all means.

"It's a complete revolution in the way children's books will be published," said Michel Kripalani, president of Oceanhouse.

Okay. Now that we've got that straight.

"A lot of the old skills won't apply anymore in publishing," Michel said. "I won't have to ship from China anymore, I won't have to deal with resellers, or with brick and mortar stores."



That echoes what Stephen Roxburgh said recently when he spoke at 57th Street Books about his new publishing venture, namelos, which prints books in hardback, paperback, and e-formats all on demand. From a publishing standpoint, this makes a lot of sense. No paying to move freight, no gambling on how many books to send out and how many get remaindered, no grinding down unsold books into pulp. The Lorax (another recent Oceanhouse release) would be proud.

I was especially excited to look at Michel's version of Dr. Seuss's ABC since it is the very book that my five-year-old is actually reading to us right now. So for me, after years of reading about Little Lola Lopp and the lazy lion licking a lollipop in the traditional paper and glue format, it was a bit of a rush to hear the narrator's voice in the iPad app. (This is a book that came out in 1960 and probably taught me, my husband, and these app programmers how to read!) Besides hearing the narrator read the text, I could tap on Lola and see her name cross the screen as the narrator read "Little Lola Lopp." I could tap on the lollipop and see that word come up as well, accompanied by the sound of a creature happily licking.

Oceanhouse plans to produce one to two Dr. Seuss books per month until they've gone through the entire Seuss library of 44 books and stories. Michel began to explain that it takes just a couple weeks to produce an app. I missed what he said next because I'd begun choking on my chai and dropped the phone. A couple weeks? Surely I'd misheard the man.

"That's assuming we have the source content -- the original digital art files of Dr. Seuss books," he explained. "We do a recording session for the narration in a professional studio, create a new set of sound effects for each book, pull it all together in our proprietary engine. . ."

Slow down there, Tex. I get what galleys are, F&Gs, and I can tell my ARC from a hole in the ground. But I don't speak this lingo. What's a proprietary engine?

"It's what we call the code, or the technology that everything is sitting on," he explained patiently, clearly aware by this point in our conversation that he was dealing with a 20th century book gal (or is it more like 15th century? How long has this model been around?). "It's the core technology that's under the hood for every book. Because essentially we are a software company more than a book publisher."

And that's a great point. Because for picture books, more so than any other electronically delivered books, the interactive element will require much more equipment under the hood. Michel said Oceanhouse wasn't interested in too many whistles and bells in their books, but there are interactive qualities.

"The fact that we started with Dr. Seuss guided our direction. He was all about teaching kids to read, so we use that as our litmus test. 'Will this feature help a child learn to read better?' If we highlight a word, it will help."

So how long did he say it takes to get the app to market?

"It takes a couple weeks to pull all that together, then we get Seuss approval (from Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which handles the licensing of all things Seuss), then we submit to Apple for approval. From the time we get Seuss approval to the Apple store is less than 100 hours."

And as if that weren't enough to make you want to sing like one of the Whos down in Whoville, he added,

"Then we're immediately available for sale in 70-plus countries."

So what does this mean for authors? Looking at Oceanhouse's model, they're going with a proven winner in the traditional format and adapting it to the new market. There's no editing and revising of the text, no working with an illustrator to bring that text to life. But will other houses take a risk on an unknown author? I think the answer is yes. But it will take time.

"It's hard to say what it means for authors," Michel said. "In general, the author's cut could be higher in this model than the old one. Traditional publishers have a lot of overhead; they have to print all those books just to get them into, say, 100 bookstores.

"But with this model, you have hundreds of thousands of people seeing your book. What iTunes did for music it is doing all over again for books, without a doubt."

So what's next for Oceanhouse? Michel and his wife are looking to have a baby any day now. And beyond that, we can look for One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish in June. And just in time for graduation, they'll be releasing Oh, the Places You'll Go!

And with an iPad, that could be just about anywhere.

Have you hugged your screen today?

I’m done apologizing.

My days of hiding my kids’ Wii remotes when unexpected guests knock at the door are all behind me. The era of ushering the little darlings away from the computer screens when the neighbors stop by is history.

I’m now embracing technology, that 2.0-pound gorilla in the room. I’m getting more comfortable with the place it’s found in my home. While I used to cringe at how tech-savvy my five-year-old was (“He should be reading more books!”), now I’m all right (and a little impressed) with the way he can move so fluidly from beating his big brother at basketball on the Wii to downloading a free game on the iTouch to picking up where he left off playing Spore on the laptop.

What’s made me stop apologizing for all this tech play at my house? It might have something to do with a recent job I started, working with an academic whose area of research is digital media and urban schools. Or maybe it's from reading stories about serious institutions like the MacArthur Foundation’s commitment to digital media and young people’s learning.

But most likely it has to do with a talk I heard Thursday night at 57^th Street Book Store in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. The speaker was Stephen Roxburgh, a former children’s book editor and publisher who is at the forefront of the e-book revolution. Having recently founded a new publishing venture called namelos, which can deliver a children’s novel in the click of a button, Stephen talked to us about the current convulsions in the book publishing industry. He likened it to Gutenberg’s arrival on the scene back in the mid-1400s.

“Screens are the future of content delivery, not ink on paper.”

Stephen (pictured here at 57th Street Books) says this on his blog, but it was also the essence of what he discussed with the bookstore audience, made up mostly of SCBWI-Illinois writers and illustrators who have an enormous stake in the conversation. When I heard Stephen – legendary editor of such distinguished children’s authors as Roald Dahl, Madeleine L’Engle, Carolyn Coman, and Uri Shulevitz, to name a few – talk about embracing the book delivered via computer screen as closely as the one bound in leather with gilt pages, I began to question my own thinking.

Technology is changing so rapidly, every day offers tremendous change from the one before. It’s all a bit dizzying. But there is no mistaking that products like Apple’s iPad are revolutionizing the way we live, work, and enjoy our leisure time.

Says Stephen, “. . . a powerful tablet computer with a high-resolution screen and intuitive operating system is the face of the future of reading. . . .”

And when I look at my kids – my five-year-old especially, who has used his daddy’s iTouch like a pacifier, tucking himself into a big chair in the corner of our family room when he needs a little quiet time – I couldn’t agree more.

They are perfectly content to enjoy a picture book delivered by one of the many screens in our house as from the glossy pages of the hardback book they pluck off the shelf. They are equal opportunity consumers of media right now, but I have a feeling that they are going to prefer their books online soon. Because that’s where they have been going for information and entertainment since they could toddle over to a chair, clamber up at a desk, and click the mouse to bring up the Sesame Street website. PBS Kids’ online games have been as crucial to their reading development as the dog-eared copies of Dr. Seuss’s ABCs.

So it’s official. As of Thursday – which was Earth Day, I might note – I am done apologizing for my kids’ screen use. Though we still love paper books in our house (they are everywhere, even wedged beneath the cushion where I am sitting), I am comfortable with my kids reading new ones as well as the classics via a screen.

And if it means we save a few trees in the bargain, all the better. It’s one less thing I have to apologize for.