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The numberlys 20151/8/2024 Now turn the page and you find yourself on the other side of that window. Example: One page shows a boy in a coral colored cap peeking from an airplane window. Everything on one page corresponds to what happens on the next by showing the “other side”. Fortunately, the instructions are in the title itself. “You need to understand how to read this book before you pick it up. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, here’s the description I wrote of the book back in the day: And as it happens, I never would have considered it but The Other Side is rather ideal in an electronic format. Your intelligence will just have to rise to its level.”įorgotten in the wake of Banyai’s more popular Zoom and Re-Zoom, the book finds a new life in the form of an app for kids. But for pure visual adrenaline, few things will entrance and entice you better than Banyai’s remarkable effort. One JanuI wrote it up (marking it as one of the last pre-blog reviews I would write) and said that, “I’m not gonna tell you that every person and child you hand this to is gonna adore it. And the book that Mental Canvas decided to use to kick off a lot of what it’s doing was, of all things, Istvan Banyai’s The Other Side.Ĭhildren’s librarians who’ve been in the business since 2005, do you remember this book? It was one of the first I ever reviewed at old. Funded by the National Science Foundation’s SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research Program), the company uses Dorsey’s visual computing specialty to develop “a new digital graphical media type that sits between a 2D drawing and a 3D model.”Ĭome again? Well, honestly, the only real way to explain it is to see it. Julie Dorsey, a Professor of Computer Science at Yale University, is the Founder and CEO of this relatively new software company. Into this uncertain landscape steps Mental Canvas. Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan (with music by Sxip Shirey!) or maybe The Numberlys by Bill Joyce (which is kind of a cheat to include since the app preceded the book, but you know what I mean). The end result of all this was that the picture book apps we’ve been seeing over more recent years have been of an artistic bent. Over a very long period of time an app might make back its money, but that’s always assuming you aren’t producing a bunch of them at once. You invest a lot of money at the front end, but charge only scant amounts to the customers (I mean, seriously, who’s gonna buy a $10 app?). It didn’t take long before simple economics made it clear that apps don’t make much in the way of moolah. And so, for a little while, we saw a real plethora of lovely apps based on picture books. In the early days of apps, publishers were under the distinct impression that since they were new and cool, they’d provide a possible revenue stream. Particularly if it is a very rare literary app for kids. Still, once in a while you encounter an app that speaks to you. ![]() But reviewing apps is an arduous process that takes an entirely different set of muscles than those used for book reviewing. There was a time, best beloved, when I thought this little blog would do it all. Foof! It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these so forgive me while I stretch the old app-reviewing little gray cells for a second.
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