Living Books
Living Books is a series of interactive read-along adventures aimed at children aged 3–9. Created by Mark Schlichting, the series was mostly developed by Living Books for CD-ROM and published by Broderbund for Mac OS and Microsoft Windows. Two decades after the original release, the series was re-released by Wanderful Interactive Storybooks for iOS and Android.
The series began in 1992 as a Broderbund division that started with an adaptation of Mercer Mayer's Just Grandma and Me. In 1994, the Living Books division was spun-off into its own children's multimedia company, jointly owned by Broderbund and Random House. The company continued to publish titles based on popular franchises such as Arthur, Dr. Seuss, and Berenstain Bears.
In 1997 Broderbund agreed to purchase Random House's 50% stake in Living Books and proceeded to dissolve the company. Broderbund was acquired by The Learning Company, Mattel Interactive, and The Gores Group over the following years, and the series was eventually passed to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which currently holds the rights. The series was kept dormant for many years until former developers of the series acquired the license to publish updated and enhanced versions of the titles under the Wanderful Interactive Storybooks series in 2010.
The series has received acclaim and numerous awards.
History
Conception
Inspiration and pitch
The initial motivation behind the series came from a childhood fantasy of Mark Schlichting's to enter into the picture book world of Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who!; to visit the houses of Whoville and interact with the "weird and fantastical instruments and contraptions". As a boy, he was enamoured by the fantasy worlds of children's picture books through Dr. Seuss and the magic of animation through Disney. Further inspiration came out of his concern as a father to video gaming boys. By 1986 Schlichting had "Nintendo guilt", observing how his sons were engaged with Nintendo titles for hours, working cooperatively and diligently, but unable to focus on their homework. Their focus was on level mastery, but they couldn't find any titles both educational and fun enough to hold their interest. Schlichting wanted this same level of cognitive involvement with something more substantive, matching the attention-grabbing play aspects of popular games with meaningful content. He devised a concept of "highly interactive animated picture books for children" that would "delight and engage kids but that also had real learning content as well", which would evolve into Living Books.After receiving a degree in fine arts and working as a book publishing art director, he retrained in traditional animation. Schlichting entered the children's software industry in 1987, and was contracted as a freelance animator and digital illustrator at Broderbund Software for early floppy disk PC games including games within the Carmen Sandiego franchise such as Europe and U.S.A.'''' By 1988, Schlichting's work at Broderbund led to him securing a full-time position at the company. Schlichting later admitted that he accepted the job offer to be able to sell his concept to Broderbund, believing that the best way to talk Broderbund into spending $1,000,000 on a product for a market that didn't exist was from within the company. After three months, Broderbund permitted him to create a small prototype in-house, and as source material he used a book he had illustrated called I'm Mine. The "deceptively simple" premise saw Schlichting take the children's story, computerize the artwork, and offer kids the choice of having the computer read the story to them or "play" inside the pages of the book. The title 'Living Books' was chosen to represent that everything in the environment is alive and for the player to experiment with.
The then-unknown designer began pitching the CD-ROM-based Living Books around the company "to anyone who would listen" and presented his prototype to demonstrate the concept. Schlichting argued that the "driving force" to make these storybooks interactive was due to the "natural draw and deep interest" that children experience with technological interaction like games; he therefore wanted to offer the ability to "explore and learn through discovery at their own pace". He pitched, "I wanted to harness some of that natural draw that computers have for kids...You know how flowers follow the sun? That's called heliotropism. Well, kids have a 'computertropism'". He "lobbied his bosses" to allow him start a CD-ROM division that would "add a new dimension to children's books", pitching to increasingly senior staff from his superior Michele Bushneff, to her boss Vice President of Broderbund John Baker, and eventually reaching Broderbund co-founder and CEO Doug Carlston, all of whom offered encouragement in different ways. Baker felt that the idea of talking computer books was "obvious and simple" and that it was difficult to imagine them holding the interest of a child; he also thought that animated parents could create the same amount of "involvement and character identification" as an onscreen book through their real-life storytelling. However, he conceded that the medium offered an opportunity to "charm" the user through its design.
Approval and prototypes
In 1989, Dutch electronics hardware manufacturer Phillips happened to observe the Living Books prototype while on a tour of the Broderbund offices, and offered the company $500,000 to produce a title that would run on a new television set-top box they were in the process of developing. As a result, after four months of pitching Schlichting was given the go-ahead by Carlston to put together a prototype using an early version of what became MacroMedia Director. Carlston was drawn to the idea because he had noticed a demographic trend of births among Broderbund staff jumping to 15 a year, suggesting a "demand for software to help small children learn". Living Books married this demographic trend to new CD-ROM technology that Schlichting was interested in. Baker was put in charge of Living Books. According to St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Schlichting "persuaded his employer" to "spend millions of dollars on his notion to create Living Books". As a result, Schlichting's demo concept became a development group. By 1990, the Broderbund's Living Books group had less than 5 people.After a few months of development, the first fully-featured prototype for Living Books was complete; it was an adaption of Mercer Mayer's Little Monsters at School. This beta version included two pages to demonstrate how a transition might work, had the main character narrate the story, and included highlighted text as he read. Schlichting and his son provided the voices for the baby and the young protagonist respectively. The product was designed as a "reading product" as well as a storybook; Schlichting wanted children to have a "relationship with the text". He turned off the mouse cursor until the story was read so they had to watch the words. Schlichting utilised a "child-informed design approach", playtesting the game for children and listening to their feedback, thereby allowing children to "contribute to and critique product development" He wanted the programs to not only be made "for kids" but "with kids". The offices were filled with toys and none of the staff wore ties. The original concept saw a child narrator deliver the story from a prosthenian arch with the text above their head, but upon play-testing Schlichting discovered that children's eyes were fixated on the narrator's mouth and they weren't following the words, which led to a less-in-more design decision. To resolve this, he had the highlighted text as the only animation with nothing else moving, so users focused on the words while the story was being read, followed by the animated action. Schlicting took teacher's comments seriously and "incorporated their suggestions into the designs". Feedback offered by teachers included a request to make to program simple and straightforward to use so they wouldn't have to become technology experts. The prototype was ultimately successful, though the developers also noted the delayed reactions once hotspots were clicked which affected the game's interactivity. Michael Coffey was brought in as their first programmer to help the team work out the technology required to implement their ideas. Meanwhile, Broderbund publicly announced the Living Books project of CD-ROM animated, talking children's stories in August 1991.
Mercer Meyer's popular children's book Just Grandma and Me was chosen as the premiere title of the new series, as their initial attempt at "eras the line between learning and playing". This was because he owned the book rights outright which made negotiation easier; Meyer opted not to collaborate directly with Living Books on the adaption, though he did offer approvals during development. With the support of Broderbund management, the team evolved into the Living Books Broderbund division; they moved to an open office area and added more staff who were allocated to the project. Schlichting originally served as Living Books' creative director, and in 1996, he would be promoted to VP of research and design. Schlichting commented, "it became clear that I was not selling a product idea, but creating a shared vision about how we could make a difference, and that shared vision influenced how the entire company felt about our work together for many years to come".
Development (1990–1992)
Creative arts
Though storyboards and layouts were often sketched out on paper, most of the animation was developed straight into the software instead of being scanned first. All the creative assets were developed on the Mac, as Living Books believed their media tools were the most advanced. The team used Photoshop for basic painting and Illustrator for work that required scaling as it moves; meanwhile the animation was completed in Adobe Director, and followed by being converted to a special format using Broderbund's proprietary rendering/interaction engine. Technical designer Barbara Lawrence worked on digital backgrounds, while ex-Disney animator Don Albrecht assisted with animations. Animators like Donna Bonifield worked in the attic with rows of CRT screen computers in a room that reached 120 degrees. Schlichting opted for an animation style instead of using live video clips.As Broderbund didn't have a recording studio, sound designer Tom Rettig individually recorded and saved each audio file in a small office. Living Books' first full time sound designer and musician, Joey Edleman, wrote the Living Books theme and dance themes for their earlier stories. Edelman had previously worked at Computers and Music, a pioneering audio software company that would be used to develop the sound of Living Books; software companies Digidesign or Opcode asked Edleman what sounds they wanted for his projects to be released in upcoming versions of their programs. Roy Blumenfeld served as audio engineer for The Cat in the Hat. When Schlichting created a sound effect for a falling leaf, he named it "Ode to Goofy" in honour of the Disney character. Schlichting sought colleagues to serve as voice actors, and this process helped the office to become invested and champion the project. Often, ancillary characters were played by Living Books staff; Grandma in Just Grandma and Me was played by Schlichting himself and his son played Little Creature; meanwhile sound designers Bob Marshall and Edelman played Tortoise and Hare in The Tortoise and the Hare. One scene containing in motion cabbages required the entire staff to go into the sound studio and run around. It took up to 15 takes to record words and sentences correctly; they had been recorded carefully in order to get speech right.
The sound designers found it difficult to achieve exact sync when sound, CD-ROM, and animation play at varying speeds on different CPU machines. The animation also had to be carefully tuned in order to match the speed limitations of low end machines. Issues could arise with assets like a Bus coming onto the screen with a large part missing off screen. The team noted any times that child playtesters started clicking before the end of a gag, as this was a sign it wasn't working. In some cases, sound is emphasized to compensate for the limits in animation. Graphic technician Rob Bell served as a bridge between the animators and programmers, editing the artists' work to fit into the program and advocating for program edits to fit the artist's vision. Karl Ackerman worked for Living Books as a prototyper, doing concept and programming work on games. Proposed product ideas that were ultimately unsuccessful included adaptions of Between the Lions, Eager Ogre's Pet Show, Nickelodeon's Rugrats, Sesame Street, and Sing Along: Maggie's Farm, among others, as well as a Story Book Maker title in 1996.
A group of Broderbund producers – Clair Curtain, Todd Power, and Rob Martyn – was brought in to help Living Books stay on budget and schedule. Around this time, Mickey Mantle was hired as Broderbund CTO and he became an advocate for his "pet project" Living Books, working closely with the programmers to ensure the work was delivered. Lucinda Ray joined Broderbund from 1993 to 1999 as Education Product Manager, where she managed the development and editing of more than 60 Teacher's Guides to accompany Brøderbund and Living Books' Living Books School Editions. From 1990, Donna Bonifield began in production roles and over four years became Living Books' Technical Creative Director in 1994. Living Books was considered as a skunkworks project by its team, which they believed was hidden from the main building to shield it. At one point Baker who by this point had championed the series, tried to raise money from potential investors at Sony to be able to continue the fledgling project. Edelman jokingly referred to the working conditions as a sweatshop; meanwhile Lawrence shared an office room with Schlichting and frequently heard his disagreeable phone calls.