Interactive ipad books for children

Are these the best thing since the invention of the printing press? Or are they to be viewed with a similar sneer as the one bestowed upon wall-to-wall C-Beebies by a certain tranche of middle class parents? So far I am torn on this matter.

A couple of weeks ago I had the good fortune to be able to jump on a bicycle, alone, at midday, under the beating sun with no need for a coat on and cycle 15 minutes to arrive at the Hampstead ladies pond for an idyllic and ultra-refreshing swim. As the dragonflies flew past my head I had not a care in the world, it belied description. And as I savoured the glow afterwards, gazing down the meadow an apparent brainwave came to mind, to design Liberty print kilts for little boys and girls! R&D is underway, watch this space as they say.

I mention this as a preamble to another apparent brainwave, to harness skills for an interactive i-pad book for children. I thought this was a novel idea and tapped it straight into google where in a split second I had over 350,000 hits. (The kilts were definitely more original). Nevertheless, I guessed that very few of these would be an interactive book that I actually appealed to my critical eye. The book, or series of books, that I have in mind are remaining tightly under wraps, suffice to say it was published over 30 years ago and deserves an outing in the new millenium. But it has got me all in a lather about my stance on this.

Peruse Alice in Wonderland for ipad. It feels like you are the first to see this, no? but there have already been over a million viewers on that youtube video alone.

Why I am deeply suspicious:

Speed. The advert is over five times as fast as I would like to view it. This is purely a sign of my age and reminds me that since the fast cuts of hospital series ER first came on the screen I have been increasingly left behind by the ever accelerating trend for speed in editing the moving image. Somebody half my age has been brought up on this and has a brain that appears to tolerate watching such a storm of images and process it, whilst also processing music through and earpad (sic - I know) in one ear and corresponding on facebook with one eye. The trailer for the world cup was, for me, the latest in this Babel-like fantasy which shows no signs of slowing down. Since the 'Alice' advert is in this gear is then it seems like too much to hope for that the ipad book will provide a slow enough medium to discover the text at any real level of depth.

Sensation. Corny it is, but surely nothing beats holding the soft paper of a book. I could rhapsodise about the aged origins of a sheaf of papyrus, the world-changing democracy of Gutenberg's printing press, the well-chewed, well-loved corner of a board book for a 6 month old, and I have; it's all true. When holding an ipad I bet what you feel is a thrill of owning and touching the latest piece of MacSoftware worth £xxx and that the kudos is more than half about the zeitgeist and your utter coolness to be touching such a fancy piece of kit, rather than an engagement with the text it portrays.

Wholeness. This was pointed out to me by a friend but I'll claim it was latent in my mind. A piece of art has a beginning, a middle and an end, right? or thus it was drummed into me by a certain dragon of an English teacher a while ago. When I read a bedtime story to a child the child knows and I know that I'll be getting to the end and then that afterwards presumably that story can be digested in the mysterious drift off to sleep. Music and visual art also gain their own force in being made whole. When you open an ipad book I expect you select it from the sea of other files you own and that when you are in it there is no physical sense of its entirety, short of maybe a time-bar if you tap the screen. It leaves the medium open for abuse, for unsatisfying nibbles and tastes of artistry that may be abandoned at the moment that attention wanes. I'm all for long attention spans.

Why I am thoroughly seduced:

Fusion. I have a feeling that this format has created a whole new medium for art that is greater than the sum of its parts. What are its parts? Well, the written word, visual art, the spoken voice, music, animation and lastly, the empowerment to be able to bring about cause and effect in all of these. So, the talking book answers a need when you are in some long daily commute by car; the illustrated book is the current state of the art and is loading up your bookshelf, looking good; the music is there in the film version; the animation has been there in Walt Disney's Fantasia for well over 50 years; the web has been there for more than a decade and now we navigate websites at will. A toddler until a certain age that I have not yet had the glee to observe cannot navigate a website at will, but pressing on a throbbing potion which is audibly calling out "Drink me!" and then basking as the liquid plays some sort of trick may well be possible.

What else? That's about it for now. Ever cautious, the cons seem to have outweighed the pros at the moment. It's all a ruse to keep you from guessing what my ipad fantasy will turn out to be, but again, watch this space, the voice of the century has agreed to read it for me!