Making a Connection With Interactive Children's Books

While ebooks and mobile apps may be garnering a lot of attention and press, print books are still quite adept at capturing kids' imaginations and getting them engaged in their pages. "It's something that you can hold, grab, bite, chew on, and take with you, no matter what," says Handprint Books' Christopher Franceschelli. "And the fact that the book is always there is a positive in a child's life, rather than the sort of ephemeral appearance on the screen."

Adds Franceschelli: "It has been reassuring to me that some of the most successful traditional children's books are still popular in places like Silicon Valley, because it's precisely those software developers who recognize that the world of ebooks, the world of electronic interaction, somehow has to be balanced. It is my sense that the best ebooks will be those that are created, first and foremost, originally as ebooks -- not conversions of traditional print media."