Living Books series

Living Books
Parent company	Random House/Brøderbund
Founded	1989
Status	Later bought by Scholastic Corporation after Brøderbund was purchased by The Learning Company
Country of origin	United States
Location	Eugene, Oregon San Rafael, California Novato, California

The Living Books series is a series of interactive animated multimedia children's books, first produced by Brøderbund and then spun off into a jointly-owned (with Random House) subsidiary, which were distributed on CD-ROM for Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows. The series began with the release of Just Grandma and Me (an adaptation of the book by Mercer Mayer) in 1992; other titles in the series included The Tortoise and the Hare, Arthur's Teacher Trouble (and other adaptations of books by Marc Brown), Dr. Seuss and Berenstain Bears titles.^[1]

Living Books became quite popular in the mid-1990s and were even used in some classrooms to teach English. Some home-computer users reported purchasing CD-ROM drives and sound cards specifically to run Living Books.

Many of them had selections for other languages, such as Spanish and Japanese in US releases, and French and German in European ones.

The series did have an official website, www.livingbooks.com^[2], but after the series was canceled by Broderbund, the site was up for grabs and bought by Scholastic. It was then converted into a jungle book series website that sold books published by Scholastic.

CD-ROMs in the series

• Just Grandma and Me (1992)
• Arthur's Teacher Trouble (1993)
• The New Kid on the Block (1993)†
• The Tortoise and the Hare (1993)
• (Colossal) Pictures' Ruff's Bone (1994)
• Little Monster at School (1994)
• Arthur's Birthday (1994)
• Harry and the Haunted House (1994)
• The Berenstain Bears Get in a Fight (1995)
• Dr. Seuss's ABC (1995)†
• The Lion King (1995)
• Stellaluna (1996)†
• Green Eggs and Ham (1996)†
• The Berenstain Bears in the Dark (1996)†
• Sheila Rae, the Brave (1996)
• Arthur's Reading Race (1996)†
• Just Grandma and Me 2.0 (1996)
• Arthur's Birthday 2.0 (1996)
• The Cat in the Hat (1997)†
• Arthur's Computer Adventure (1997)†
• D.W. the Picky Eater (1998)
• The Art Lesson (1994)(Rare Living Book, only included in "Living Books Library" - School Edition)^[3]

† = Only English is available as a language for this Living Books program

Use

Almost all the CD-ROMs in the series give the user the same four options:

1. Read to Me button: The story is read to the user.
2. Let me Play button: Takes the user to the story and allows interaction after each page is read.
3. Options button: Takes the user to the Options menu where they can see the credits, and any demos/previews if available and choosing the page from the Let Me Play button and clicking the "OK" button.
4. Quit button: Closes the program and returns to the user's computer desktop.

Reception

Publishers Weekly, in a review of Dr. Seuss' ABC, called that title "one of the best children's CD-ROMs to date" and stated that, "[...] the producers' fondness for Dr. Seuss and their fidelity to his sense of refined silliness spill into every sequence."^[4] Simson L. Garfinkel and Beth Rosenberg found that the CD-ROMs played better on Macs than on PCs. Although they found the titles to be of high quality in a market flooded with "questionable" releases for children, they stated that not all of them lived up to the company's educational claims (noting Dr. Seuss' ABC and Arthur's reading Race as exceptions) and felt that the added dialogue supplementing the book's text was sometimes "out of character". ^[5] Arthur's Teacher Trouble, The Tortoise and the Hare, Ruff's Bone, and Little Monster at School all received a very high score of over 90.00 in the book CD-ROMs Rated by Les Kranz; in the review for Little Monster at School, the graphics and the number of clickable areas were described as positives.^[6]

References

1. ^ Series Review "THE LIVING BOOKS Series by Living Books/Broderbund." McMath, Chuck. Game Bytes Vol 1. Num. 21. 1994. Retrieved March 24, 2007.
2. ^ archive image of website in 1997 for example
3. ^ http://www.rmlearning.com/26028.htm
4. ^ "Multimedia Reviews: Dr. Seuss' ABC". Publishers Weekly (New York: Cahners Publishing Company) 242 (35): 41. 1995-08-28. ISSN 0000-0019. 
5. ^ Garfinkel, Simson L.; Beth Rosenberg (1998-02-05). "Bringing kids' books to life". Boston Globe Online. Globe Newspaper Company. http://simson.net/clips/1998/1998.Globe.02-05.Bringing_kids__books_to_life.htm. Retrieved 2009-11-02. 
6. ^ Kranz, Les (1994). CD-ROMs Rated: A Guide to the Best and Worst CD ROMs & Multimedia Titles. Laura L. Armer, Adrienne Brown, Joel Gershon, and Pamela Thomasson (Senior Reviewers), and Marjorie Glass, Brian Harrison, Douglas W, Horner, Corolyn Huesman, Dan Laxton, Vivian Laxton, and Josh Sinton (Reviewers). McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07912052-0. 

External links

• "Behind the Scenes at Broderbund's Living Books" May 25, 1993. Retrieved October 15, 2008.