Knowledge Adventure Books by You
© 2006 Knowledge Adventure, Inc.
There's no better way to improve your literacy skills than to write a book; at least that's the idea behind this "Mad-Lib" like activity. A child fills in the blanks on the key details (characters, places, moods) on four rather long story templates, with titles such as "The Case of the Missing Monkey" and "The Wailing Alien." Getting started is easy. Once the software is installed, a child enters his or her name, and the program automatically starts keeping track of any project. The next step is to select one of four stories to make. Unfortunately, there's no way to tell if the stories are long, short, easy or hard, so this process feels random. Next, actor and children's book author, John Lithgow (www.johnlithgow.com) provides an animated tour of the plot and proceeds to serve as a virtual muse for each step of the story creation process. The child fills in the core details. This includes everything from: "Is the main character a boy or a girl?" to "What is something that smells really rotten?" There can be up to 100 questions per chapter, with as many as seven chapters, so the process can get tedious. Fortunately, it is possible to see each chapter in layout mode to fine-tune phrases or import your own pictures. At anytime a child can exit, at which point the story progress is bookmarked. This is a good feature, as one story can take several hours from start to finish. Drawbacks to note include the a lack in variety and leveling of the books. It would be nice to see an easier book, for example. While the jazzy background music, silly animations and John Lithgow's upbeat narration make things more interesting, they might also impede on the creativity process. Once the book is finished, it can be read onscreen as a slideshow or converted into a PDF for printing or posting online. The final product looks great, with a professional-looking layout and graphics. There's a set of book promotion features, that let children print a poster or a press release to promote the book. The books can be sent away for professional binding at Lulu.com ($10 for a softcover, $20 for hardcover). This program would work well in either home or classroom use. It is an excellent language enrichment activity for older children (3rd grade and up). Created by Fablevision.
$20, Windows XP, Mac OSX
Teaches: reading, writing, creativity, grammar, parts of speech
CTR Rating: 90%