We want a book to be a book. We'll have all the interactive bells and whistles but our intent is to engage young people in reading, not to show them a movie.
Ghost stories and Sherlock Holmes mysteries were great. And I had a major soft spot for those 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books.
I love the idea of books being more than books, or being, rather, something other than books.
The fact that books today are mostly a string of words makes it easier to forget the text. With the impact of the iPad and the future of the book being up for re-imagination, I wonder whether we'll rediscover the importance of making texts richer visually.
Kids are not going to sit and read a slow-paced book. Neither are adults.
In Endless Quest books, you start the plot, and the character has to make choices. Then you have to write one choice over here, one choice over there. The author might get one or two choices out.
There is a lot of talk in publishing these days that we need to become more like the Internet: We need to make books for short attention spans with bells and whistles - books, in short, that are as much like 'Angry Birds' as possible. But I think that's a terrible idea.
There are so many ways to tell a story. With multiplatform books, we are reimagining what literacy can be.
I want children to be glued to interactive books that encourage singing and dancing. I feel when kids work together it brings about a different energy.
