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Picture book publisher Winged Chariot Press has launched Europe’s first children’s picture book on a mobile telephone. The company has published The Surprise (see image from the book above), by Sylvia van Ommen, on the iPhone.
The iPhone device is particularly suited to picture books owing to its touch-sensitive colour screen, said Neal Hoskins, founder of Winged Chariot Press. Children can follow the story on the iPhone using sliding illustrations, animation and sound.
Hoskins added: "At home many parents already share their laptops and phones as digital entertainment devices with their children. Now, they can use and enjoy them together in a new variety of mini-reading experiences on journeys."
He added that the backlit screens also make mobile devices an exciting new way to share bedtime stories.
The Surprise can be downloaded for 59p as an iPhone app. The company has launched a Twitter competition offering a prize linked to the book to help to publicise its launch.
Winged Chariot is making more of its titles available for the iPhone, including The Red Apple by Feridun Oral. Hoskins is particularly excited about the international reach of the application. The Red Apple, for example, will be made available with text and audio, enabling users to read or listen to the story in a chosen language, in this case English or Turkish.
While Winged Chariot is one of the first publishers to make its picture book available as a mobile phone application, others are working on similar developments. Ross Sleight, director of Missing Ink Studios, said the company was working with a number of publishers to make their content available via mobile applications with announcements due in September.
The company is also publishing a 12+ illustrated novel, The Duckling Chronicles by Emilie Christensen, as an app, paperback and e-book in late autumn.