The Children's App Manifesto

So I just got passed along this new manifesto for quality and responsibility in the creation of children's apps. I know quite a few people whose names appear in the signatures, and there's nothing in the manifesto that they weren't already doing; be sure to read the "Our Thinking" page. Where it might be most helpful for producers is to get in touch with other like-minded professionals. On that note, the Facebook Children and Media Professionals group is great for that to. Happy producing!

Sesame Street Launches in Afghanistan

There are already local versions across the globe, but the newest, that premiered yesterday, is significant for obvious reasons (just think of the fact Abby and Zoey are learning along with Elmo and Telly, for one example). Here's the AFP article (no byline):

US children's television favourite Sesame Street came toAfghanistan this week with the launch of a new series featuring familiar characters like Elmo and Big Bird.

"Baghch-e-Simsim" made its debut on a local TV channel Thursday and aims to improve education for children in the desperately poor, warring country.

It features Sesame Street's typical mix of Jim Henson's Muppets and short educational films and its initial run is for 26 half-hour episodes.

But some of the most familiar characters from the original show had to be cut from the Afghan version for cultural reasons, including the trash-loving Oscar the Grouch and The Count, a vampire maths whizz.

"Oscar the Grouch I had to minimise because his passion for trash did not translate well culturally here," the show's Afghan-American producer, Tania Farzana, told AFP.

As for The Count, she added that his fangs and fondness for bats would have proved problematic in a conservative, Islamic society like Afghanistan.

Producers also had to scrap a scene they tested in which shock-headed duo Bert and Ernie barked at each other.

"I can have them do lion sounds, rooster sounds but doing a dog is not acceptable," Farzana said.

"One of the worst words you can call someone in Afghan culture is a dog so to have kids barking like one is going beyond the line of what's right."

Farzana added that, unlike the US version of Sesame Street, dancing was not encouraged on the Afghan version.

Such activity in front of the opposite sex is seen as overtly sexual in Afghanistan, so Afghan children watching the show are encouraged to exercise to music instead of dancing.

"That way I don't get reprimanded by the parents because it's exercise and who can disagree with that?" Farzana said.

It is not the first time that the Sesame Street format has been exported.

A version of the show came to neighbouring Pakistan earlier this year, funded by the US government's international aid agency USAID, while co-productions have also screened in Bangladesh, Egypt, Mexico and Russia.

The latest version is a joint production by Sesame Workshop, the non-profit organisation behind Sesame Street, and Afghan television station Tolo.

"Teachers here in Afghanistan will discover that Sesame Street can help children start school well prepared," said the US ambassador to Kabul, Ryan Crocker. "Perhaps most importantly, it shows children the world around them."

Afghanistan's deputy education minister Mohammad Siddiq Patman said he believed the programme would "depict traditions, culture and other aspects of Afghan rural and urban life" and would be "profoundly useful" for children.

And here's a really short video from the Guardian:

New Beauty and the Beast app

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We were able to go down to Virginia Beach to see my brother's family, play with cousins, work on riding a bike without dozens of cars all around, and visit Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg on Black Friday. It wasn't Plymouth, but it was great to see the site of America's oldest English settlement and the recently excavated site of their first church, where Pocahontas was married. (At least I think the covered hole in the ground was the site referenced in the article, which came out a day or two after we visited.) Loretta's just suddenly gotten into the American Girl books, so it was nice to have two in hours in Williamsburg so that she can identify with the place when she reads the Felicity books, which she started this morning on the subway. It was a really unexpected "text-to-self" connection, as they say at her school.

Recently I've really been trying to get up to speed on all the kids' literary/narrative apps out there, like the Mo Willems app I wrote about the other week. A new one came out on 11/11 that looks really promising, Disney's Beauty and the Beat Storybook Deluxe:

Here's the description as posted in the app store:

Experience a tale as old as time in this fully interactive Storybook Deluxe app. Complete with games, movie clips, puzzles, coloring pages, and sing-along songs from the film, you’ll find a surprise on every page. Hear the story read aloud, record your own narration, or explore at your own pace.

In this unforgettable story of love and adventure, a young woman named Belle finds herself in a castle with talking furniture, an enchanted rose, and a grumpy beast. Despite an awkward beginning, Belle and the Beast gradually become friends, and Belle learns not to judge a book by its cover. A beloved Disney favorite retold in a magical new format the whole family can enjoy!

Features:
* Interactive Storybook Deluxe app features your favorite characters from Disney's award-winning Beauty and the Beast.
* Two reading modes allow you to follow along as the story is read aloud, or explore at your own pace.
* Engage in exciting activities based on scenes from Beauty and the Beast—help Belle make her way to the Beast's castle in the hedge maze, or go on a hunt for hidden roses.
* Puzzles and coloring pages for all ages!
* Record your voice reading the story and hear it played back as narration.
* Jump to your favorite page with the Visual Page Index.

I haven't been able to try it out yet--I guess I need to put an iPhone or Pad on my Christmas list--but it shows the promise of the expanding field of e-publishing. The combination of gaming and print is interesting, expanding the story world of the experience in ways that can engage new readers or lengthen the experience for established fans, and the games and coloring pages look really fun. But I'm a little more interested in the ways the app lets kids interact with the text itself. Essentially, different reading levels and reading out loud yourself remind me exactly of reading a print book, but it is a little different. Hearing your voice back, for instance, is something a book can't do, and I'd love to hear more about users' experiences--or professional research--about how this influences kids and the act of "reading" a text.

If you watch this demo video, however, you'll be reminded that the Disney Beauty and the Beast that's being adapted here to app form is not a book but a film. At first I was hesitant about the use of the full-motion video, but it looks like it actually works with the printed text quite well; the music, visuals, and Linda Woolverton's narrative innovations are obviously the strength of the film version, after all, so it wouldn't make sense to ignore those in bringing the film to the iPad (plus the performances by all the actors). What you're left with is a nice mix of video, print, and gaming, which should be a great treat for any Disney Princess fan. I hope that with future adaptations the mix becomes more and more fluid, but how to do that will be the state of the art of narrative app design.

Off to Bed! with Dada Company

So even though I haven't yet been able to get an iPhone or iPad, I'm trying to get more informed about the children's media, particularly narrative media, that's appearing on their screens. One app that I've recently come across is the interactive picture book Off to bed! by Mariam Ben-Arab and David Yerga. It's produced by the Spain-based Dada Company and is now available in English as well as Spanish. Here's a video trailer:

And here's a little promotional film about the company in general, including their title on transportation. This is in Spanish and I wish the music were mixed a little lower because it's hard for me to follow what they're saying when Zooey Deschanel is so much easier for me to understand, but even if you don't speak the language there are some good shots of their art and design work.

It looks like companies like this are starting to get their head increasingly around what interactive storytelling is and how it differs from traditional A-Z narratives. But what are these hybrid forms? Is this really a goodnight storybook or should we call it something else? Beyond semantics, is this really helpful in getting kids down for bed? I tried a Pajanimals clip tonight and it initially quieted my two-year-old down, but when it ended and we closed the laptop she broke down, so I'm not sure how helpful it was.

But those are the kinds of questions creators and parents will have to ask now, because there's obviously no going back to the pre-digital days, even for late adapters like me. (I don't want to be a late adapter! I'm just semi-employed!) So I'm excited by the enthusiasm and commitment on Dada's website and the respect they show both their young audience and their new tools. Whenever a new medium's been introduced theorists and practitioners have had to labor over finding its inherent comparative advantages vis-a-vis old media, and I think titles like Off to bed! will help move us in that direction--and entertain kids along the way. I can definitely see Izzy--and even Loretta--playing with those lights, swings, and the kissing moon for quite some time. Bien hecho y buena suerte con sus proyectos en el futuro!

A Curious George Thanksgiving

It's been about three years since I've written about the PBS/WGBH show Curious George, which was then starting its third season, and the show is still going strong and worth revisiting. Obviously the source property has been a favorite for over half a century, but the television version adapts and builds on that in a style all its own. And it's still proving popular: the show won the Outstanding Children's Animated Program Emmy last year, it's the top-ranked preschool show in the U.S., and it's been renewed through its ninth season--which is three seasons away! Building upon that popularity, PBS is airing a new collection of George films this Thanksgiving in what it hopes will become an annual holiday tradition.

In a line-up called the Curious George Holiday Spectacular, PBS will be airing the network/public television premiere of the theatrical Curious George film from 2006, followed immediately by Curious George 2: Follow That Monkey, which had aired in '09, and then, getting in the all-out holiday spirit, Curious George: A Very Monkey Christmas (also '09), a kind of mix between O. Henry, Charles Dickens, and of course Hans and Margret Rey. My 7-year-old had the chance to see the original theatrical film at an event hosted by PBS a few days ago, and she was absolutely enchanted. For the subsequent thirty minutes I heard every last plot point from beginning to end, accompanied with a tremendous amount of girlish giggling--in other words she loved it.

The films will air back to back Wednesday the 23rd and then repeat frequently throughout Thanksgiving weekend, when there's plenty of time to curate your own monkey movie marathon.

I got a chance to talk with the executive producer Dorothea Gillim (also the creator of another family favorite, WordGirl) and learned some more about how the books were adapted (a strict "no purple" rule to match the palette of the books, and the fact Margret Rey wrote in her will that George would never be allowed to talk) and what's in store for the property. Besides being slated to pass 200 regular episodes in the next few years, there's more long-form content on the way. Future television films include other seasonal productions--initially for spring and Halloween--that will roll out at least annually. These film ventures could really represent the direction George is going in his third iteration, after books and the television show, in the next decade.

Here's a spot on the Thanksgiving lineup:

And here's the trailer for the original feature film (lower resolution):

Don't Let the Pigeon Run This App

Hope everyone had a great Halloween weekend. Ours was full of candy, pumpkin carving (Harry Potter again...), some Wallace and Gromit were-rabbitting, a little partying, and, for the first time, the Halloween costume parade by Ft. Tryon Park in Washington Heights. Izzy bit into her glow stick and immediately threw up, but she recovered almost immediately and remained the cutest little chicken in the crowd (as profiled on the Today show!).

Before the holiday, however, I had the chance to learn about a cool new app from Hyperion Books and Mo Willems (seen here): Don't Let the Pigeon Run This App. (For everything the Pigeon can't do, evidently sitting on heads is allowed.)

I'm sure that nearly all parents will be familiar with Mo's work in print--he's the author of the Pigeon picture books (starting with Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus in 2003), the Elephant and Piggie easy readers, the Cat the Cat books, and numerous other stand-alone books. Recently Loretta took a break from her Harry Potter craze to really get into Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed, which we had gotten for Isabelle. There's no way a naked mole rat isn't funny, and leave it up to Mo to be the first to exploit that in a book for kids. I first saw his work when Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus was being passed around the Strand Bookstore office--which is run by adults--when I was there in 2003. Through all this he's earned my everlasting envy by doing everything I want to do better than I ever could: he's won six Emmys while working on Sesame Street, created his own kids' shows, and racked up the awards with his books: three Caldecotts, two Theodor Seuss Geisel Medals, and probably others I'm losing track of. And he's pushing boundaries as well: on October 23 Jonathan Hunt wrote a column at School Library Journal arguing that the Elephant and Piggie book I Broke My Trunk should be considered for (and win) the Newbery Medal, an award given purely on the merit of the text and hence not traditionally given to picture books; Hunt's somewhat controversial argument, illustrated through a really thorough analysis, is that Mo has blown right past all other easy readers and expanded the state of the art of the storybook or illustrated book in what most publishers and librarians would consider just a picture book. Whether that argument will persuade the ALA remains to be seen, but last month Mo published a new Elephant and Piggie book (the excellent Happy Pig Day) and installed an large-scale sculpture at the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst; and another Pigeon book, The Duckling Gets a Cookie, will be coming early next year. Talk about polymathic. Maybe he should let the Pigeon do some of this stuff!

And now there's an app. At the event last week Mo said he'd long resisted doing something interactive. After his move from television to literature this reasoning makes sense: he's astute enough to know that each property needs to fully exploit the capabilities of its medium, and he didn't want to create any type of app that didn't fully capitalize on the interactive capability of iPads and handheld devices. He didn't want it to keep going if you set it down and left the room. (That would be a TV show on a tablet.) So when the inspiration came about how to create the right kind of app in March he and the folks at Hyperion jumped right in, working on it over the summer and launching last week. And it is a pretty great piece of software; Apple noticed and named it "App of the Week" last week. At $7 it's definitely on the pricey side, but that reflects the work that went into it and the variety of activities it presents youngsters.

This is the most basic: shake the Pigeon. Mo made sure that you could shake the Pigeon--causing him to freak out as seen here--indefinitely. Tickling works too. Beyond small creative corners like this, the app breaks down into two basic categories: drawing the Pigeon and telling stories with him. The first is fairly self-explanatory, with the tutorials introduced by Mo himself. This is enough to keep budding artists busy for some time, but it's with the storytelling where things really come to life. The Disney Interactive Publishing people described this as their first author-driven app, and Mo's drive for true interactivity (much like the original books themselves) means kids are intimately involved with shaping the narratives: the title page even credits it as an app "By Mo Willems and YOU." (So kids can "infringe on my copyright in interesting ways," Mo said.)

There are three levels of interactivity here for different age ranges: Egg, which lets the youngest kids change a few nouns to create new stories; Chick, where slightly older kids can create stories through multiple-choice options; and Big Pigeon, where audio cues tell kids to supply various words, Mad Libs-style, that are then plugged into the resulting story. With all the variables built into the app--let alone the creativity of the kids using it--there are over 100,000 stories in there. (One youngster last week suggested Don't Let the Pigeon Poop on the People, and Mo promised to read it if the boy wrote it.) So there are quite a few train rides built into this thing--although given its aural interface it might be better built for quieter car rides than the straphanger kids here in the city.

Mo's influence is all over this--in a nice Freudian touch he even voiced the Pigeon himself--and I really hope it indicates the direction future narrative-based apps will be going. Thankfully, the Disney/Hyperion folks indicate that it is. After this maiden voyage--the first collaboration between the teams at Hyperion, a book-only imprint of Disney, and Disney Interactive Publishing, the app people--they have several other properties lined up and are even interested in new authors angling to write in this new space. And that bodes well for the state of art of the app; we'll see what suggestions the Newbery committee is dealing with ten years from now.

As for now, there's one cool app out there starring one surly but lovable pigeon. Check out this video and more Willems-related stuff at pigeonpresents.com.

Why we like Harry Potter

Astute readers will notice that my posts here have been steadily declining for quite some time. This is mostly because other interests have taken my time and attention elsewhere, and those other activities remain incredibly, well, active, right now. I won't go into them all, which would be boring even for me, but I will say that there's been a lot of things I've wanted to write about here that have fallen to the side during all my craziness and disorganization. (And I'm oh so sorry to those publicists and musicians who I haven't followed through with yet!! It's still coming!) I'm writing for my own film/transmedia blog and have now started posting for Filmmaker magazine, plus I'm also revising my own website--randyastle.com--with the intention to migrate a lot of my blogging there. My writing docket's pretty full.

So what to do here, on my oldest and truest little blog? Long term I don't know, but for the next little while I'm going to try shaking it up and seeing what kind of effect that can have on my own writing and consistency. In a nutshell, I'm going to try treating Red Balloon more casually, more autobiographically, and more like any other daddy blog out there--although I'll certainly retain my bias toward media. Loretta and Isabelle are seven and two now, and their adventures through the digital world are well worth chronicling.

A couple weeks ago I was cleaning out some computer and camera stuff from our storage closet and ran across a roll of 35mm film. "Look, Loretta," I said, "this is what people used to take pictures on."

"Why didn't they just use a camera?"

Oh, my dear sweet digital native. Last night she said Izzy sounded like a "record on repeat" and I realized she'll never see or hear a broken record in her life. A hair turned gray but I got a bit more insight into her seven-year-old worldview.

In monitoring all this familial activity, I won't lose my perspective as an active participant in the children's entertainment industry. I'll try to increase my reviews--helpful for both creators and users--and continue speaking about industry information, news, etc. -- just all from the perspective of a father who's both a creator and consumer in this biz.

So I'm going to try to upload a rather large video file of Loretta talking about her favorite books. She accompanied me on a shoot for a nonprofit organization, and while we had a little pause for that I had Loretta take a seat in front of the camera and asking her about books was just the first thing that popped into my head. But I think it turned into an insightful little interview.

Sorry about the squeeze and grain on the image. I shot it HD but am still figuring out all the compression codecs, etc.

So for the record, we've let her read the first two Harry Potter books but we're taking a several-month break before #3. Call us conservative, but I also think that will help draw the experience out longer and help her as the actual reading level pushes upward toward The Deathly Hallows.

Here are some of her favorites, then:

and

The Anderson School, where Loretta goes, doesn't technically celebrate Halloween, not during the school day anyway (tonight they're watching Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Wererabbit as an evening event). Next Monday is Storybook Character Day, not Halloween, so every kid's costume has to come out of a storybook somewhere. Loretta's is Annie's kimono here from Dragon of the Red Dawn. And if you're really interested in seeing it in action, here she is on the Today show this last Tuesday. A film crew caught us near the end of the day at Boo at the Bronx Zoo a couple weeks ago. So Loretta, little Isabelle (a chicken holding Cinderella's hand), and some friends are in the video at 2:41.



It was just a moment of screen time but it made Izzy's day. Happy Halloween!

Furry Puppet Studio

So we missed the Elmo doc but hit the Jim Henson exhibit and both girls really liked it; there were enough puppets and videos for them to look at and enough labels and conceptual art to supplement it for the adults. We had to drag the girls away from a documentary on Henson's life and, later, the Muppet-full gift shop.

After that we survived the hurricane by leaving town for a week to see Niagara Falls, some Mormon Church history sites east of Rochester, and some friends in Vermont, with surprisingly good roads given the flooding. The Hudson and East Rivers are both brown with flooding run off, and I stopped by the Central Park lake this morning (after dropping Loretta off at her first day of second grade!) to see it's risen about a foot (it's been raining this week too), but there's virtually no damage in the city and the kids I've talked to actually found Irene more amusing than anything else, which is a nice contrast to how it could have gone.

So let's get back to puppets. While all of that was going on I got an email from Zack Buchman, the founder of Furry Puppet Studio in Brooklyn. The studio's been around a while but they just got a new website, which looks really cool in both Flash and html versions. One thing I love about New York is the plenitude of puppet-makers here; I'm no expert but I think this may well be the puppet-making capital of the world. And Furry Puppet's work, like this example, looks great--anyone in need of some design or construction would do well to check them out!

Muppets Galore

Just a couple of notes about things going on around New York related to Muppets. The Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria is hosting the Jim Henson's Fantastic World exhibit until next January. As explained on the museum's website, the exhibit contains Muppets and material covering everything from his earliest show Sam and Friends through all the films--Muppet movies as well as Dark Crystal--and the well-known television shows: The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, and of course Sesame Street, which is filmed next door to the museum. There are evidently demonstrations and lectures on the weekends, but for the next couple weeks Friday afternoons are free, so you can pick which you'd rather have. We'll probably go this Friday.

If you like looking behind the scenes of the Muppets, you can then catch a screening of the new documentary Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey, which premiered at Sundance and is currently showing as part of DocuWeeks in New York and L.A. Directed by Constance Marks, who cut her teeth with the Maysles brothers, and featuring Kevin Clash (aka Elmo), this looks like one of the best looks behind the scenes of Sesame Street we've had; for me it seems more engaging than The World According to Sesame Street from 2005. Maybe it's apples and oranges because of the different emphases of the films, but giving intelligent analysis to the character and phenomenon of Elmo, and the creative personality behind him, seems like a really excellent idea.

Here's a really short teaser:

Here's an interview with the filmmakers:

and with the subject:

Legend of Korra trailer

I neglected to share this a couple weeks ago during Comic-Con when it was released. But since Avatar is by far the most popular show in our home it's a pretty big deal around here. And this new series looks every bit as good as the old one, meaning the whole property won't suffer too much for its feature film misstep.

Doesn't that footbridge look excessively steep?

Party with the Laurie Berkner Band

Last week the Laurie Berkner Band released a brand new DVD-CD combo called Party Day!

My own kids are out of town so I can only give you my grown-up take on it, but I was not disappointed. It has 12 songs, taking viewers along for a costume party, a birthday party, and a pajama party. A group of kids (giving great performances) accompany them along the way, joining in for consistently upbeat songs like "This Hat," "Where is the Cake?," and the mischievous "The Cookie Bakers of the Night."

The DVD is essentially a visual album, a smart move in today's market of online media and decreased DVD and, particularly, CD sales; the great animations on the DVD, coupled with the accompanying five-track CD, give parents a reason to purchase the actual discs, although I don't know if there are plans for an iTunes version down the road.

Like all of Berkner's work, the program seems geared toward the 3-6 crowd, although I expect it should work very well all the way through age eight or even nine; the music certainly does, and I know my seven-year-old, having given up on many other preschool properties, still enjoys this band's segments on Jack's Big Music Show. I'll have to give it a go with her when she gets back from her summer vacation, but my expectation is a lot of dancing and jumping around...

The band consists of Laurie Berkner, Adam Bernstein, Susie Lampert, and Bobby Golden. The DVD was directed by Bil White and produced by his partner Nathalie Renard at Space Cadet Industries. You can check out the album on the band's website.

Here's a YouTube preview of the title track "Party Day":

First graders on transmedia

This is a great post on how first graders define transmedia buzzwords. Can't wait to try with my own first grader.

http://edtechinsight.blogspot.com/2011/06/first-graders-view-of-transmedia-world.html

Enjoy!