The first ever ebook-based immersive narration of the world’s 30 most popular fairy tales in Italy
Once upon a time there were a lot of fairy tales all over the globe. Tales were told or played dramatically and orally handed down from generation to generation, long before the written era. In the past couple of centuries they became also print books, in the past decades audio-books and very recently as simple, poorly entertaining digital books. Throughout the centuries we lost the concept of “immersive narration” with live performing actors, in exchange for broader access, near-to-zero economies, and anytime/anywhere consumption.
Now it’s just about time to resume the concept of “immersive narration” and to build a new paradigm for today’s children. A paradigm, though, that protects “narration” from “distraction”, as fairy tales aren’t games. They serve a different purpose.
Rizzoli pioneers a new way of storytelling for kids and their parents. It launches a new ebook-only collection – called “Le Grandi Fiabe Narrate” – on the world’s 30 most popular fairy tales for kids at Bologna Children’s Book Fair.
Illustrated print books and audiobooks merge to breed a new generation of digital books – a generation that goes beyond the conventional fairy tales editions and that broadens the horizons for the narration.
State-of-the-art ebook technology (ePub3) and publishing excellence together enable a new experience of immersive narration – for tablets and smartphones – that looks very simple and intuitive such as the experience of a traditional ebook (it doesn’t look like a fancy App). Behind the simplicity of the user experience, there is the complexity of user experience design and the adopted technology based on PubCoder tool suite.
However, content and user experience design come first. Technology, in this case, is mainly a key enabler of innovation.
In every Rizzoli’s new fairy tale, the voices of the actors (real professionals, not computers) are synchronized with the text that gets highlighted step by step to allow kids to better link the voice to the phrases. Each character, including the narrator, is played by a different actor so the voices are easily distinguishable. Moreover, thanks to new contextual sound effects, the narrative experience is deeper than ever: doors open, wind blows, glass breaks to pieces, and so on… Furthermore incidental music and audio signals to suggest a page turn ease the entertainment of the littlest kids even without assistance of their parents for as long as 30 minutes. Finally every page contains colored drawings, illustrations and simple motion effects to fully engage the audience. Here a short videoclip on YouTube (in Italian language).
Last but not least, for grown-up kids and for parents who wish to read aloud the fairy tales, all audio features can be disabled. In this way a classic digital reading experience can be delivered as well as an audio-only one. Three different narrative experiences, all-in-one triple-play ebook: immersive-narration, classic reading, audio-only. Again, content and user experience come first, then all the rest.
Ebooks will be immediately available on the top stores that support ePub3 best: currently iBooks and Kobo. Both are very popular in Italy. Kindle currently is missing, as it doesn’t support ePub3 and the cool features designed for this fairy tales collection. In fact, other top retailers shall soon be jumping aboard.
Immersive-narration has never been so simple and cool, maybe even not in the past centuries with live performing actors. But more importantly, kids and parents will (hopefully) love it.
An open demo event is scheduled on Wed. March 26th at 2.30pm by Rizzoli’s stand (H-26 A42) in the Bologna Children’s BookFair. Contact info [email protected].
