Adventures in Story Telling -iBook Author

I had the opportunity to create an interactive book using iBook Author. I was excited by the project because I love a good story. I love the details of a good book ranging from the typography to the images used on the cover. A good book brings the story to life so much that you feel as though you are almost living it yourself.

The first step of the process was to determine what the book should be about? After much thought, I decided to do a book on animals. My children love animals and animal books. What a great way to connect with my kids through story telling. The audience for the book is 6 to 10 year olds. I was excited by the prospect. One of my kids all time favorite animals is the Honey Badger. It is the world’s more fearless animal. That gave me the topic of my book, fearless animals. I did some research and found the more fearless animal from each content.

I created an outline for the book:

Fearless Animals Outline:

Topic: World’s most fearless animals

Cover Art

Chapter 1 — Leopard Seal (page 1)

• Photo page of Leopard Seal (page 1–2)
• Information about Leopard Seal (pages 2)

Chapter 2 — King Cobra (page 3)

• Photo page of King Cobra (page 3–4)
• Information about King Cobra (pages 4)

Chapter 3 — Poison Dart Frog (page 5)

• Photo page of Poison Dart Frog (page 5–6)
• Information about Poison Dart Frog (pages 6)

Chapter 4 — Crocodile (page 7)

• Photo page of Crocodile (page 7–8)
• Information about Crocodile (pages 8)

Chapter 5 — Kodiak Bear (page 9)

• Photo page of Kodiak Bear (page 9–10)
• Information about Kodiak Bear (pages 10)

Chapter 6 — Wolverine (page 11)

• Photo page of Wolverine (page 11–12)
• Information about Wolverine (pages 12)

Chapter 7 — Honey Badger (page 13)

• Photo page of Honey Badger (page 13–14)
• Information about Honey Badger (pages 14)

Feature Ideas:

1. Interactive image with information about each animal
2. Videos about the animals
3. Definition/ Glossary of terms used
4. Quiz about the animals

Next it was time to decided what to include in the book. What would be of the most value to my audience. I grabbed some paper and sat down to make some sketches.

I started with the basic layout for the book. What should I include? What color scheme would be best? What typography should I use? With all of these questions bouncing around in my head I got to work. I made several different sketches, but am only including the final design layout that I chose. As you can see from the sketches.

Next I started to gather the assets and information that I would need for the book. I began by collecting data about each of the animals.

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Next I collected interesting facts about each animal and images. Finding good quality images of the animals was challenging. Not only did I need two images of each animal but they needed to all be a similar type of image.

For the chapter image I tried to have them all be similar in style and think I came pretty close, considering they images were all taken by different people. Next, I needed full body images of each animal for the interactive image that I wanted to create. The concept was to have an image that could be clicked on to learn more about the different advantages each animal had due to their bodies. I was successful and found images that would work.

I searched YouTube to gather short video clips about each of the animals. This was quite fun and interesting. I probably spent a little too much time looking at videos, but it was all in the name of creating a great user experience (sure that’s what we will call it). I needed to download the videos from YouTube to add them to the book, so I used a video converter and gathered the files.

Next came typography. Typography give a feeling for the book. It’s almost like an image. I spent quite a while looking through fonts and finally landed on using ace record for the titles. I felt like this font was fierce looking and helps to invoke that feeling of animistic power and fearlessness.

For the rest of the text I wanted it to be easy to read, especially for a younger audience. I decided to go with a sanserif font open sans because it would be easy for kids to read.

Now came to fun part, putting the book together. Not being familiar with iBook Author, because I have never used it before, I got on YouTube and watched a few tutorials on how to use iBook Author.

Feeling like I had a fairly good understanding of how to use the program, I downloaded iBook Author and got to work. I began by setting up the chapters with the images for each chapter. It was easy to add new chapters. I had to reorganize the chapters a bit for the original layout because of the images. Four of the images have the chapter title on the upper left corner, while the other three images have the chapter title in the bottom left corner. I wanted to have a consistent feel throughout the book so I alternated the images so the text would go from top to bottom, back to top.

I arranged the layout of the information page, which I was happy with. I added all of the text information first. This required a lot of copy and pasting. Next I added the video, which was super easy to do. The interactive images was a bit more challenging and I had to redo it several times, but I was really happy with the results. I was just like I hoped it would be.

There are several different words that I thought might be difficult for young reads to know the meaning of. So, I added popup information when the icon was clicked on next to the word that would have the definition of the term used. I created a paw print icon to serve as this indicator. I then repeated this process for each of the animals.

I had forgotten to create a chapter image for the quiz, so I had to come back to that later. The quiz was easy to create and actually had several different choices for the type of question that you were asking. I had fun creating a short quiz for the book.

Front cover iBook Author

Finally I put the book cover image in, and I hated it! It didn’t look the same as the rest of the book. I wasn’t good, it wasn’t going to work. So back to the drawing board again for this.

I redesigned the book cover and it is so much better. It has the same look and feel as the rest of the book. Design is like that. Sometimes what you thing will be great turns out to be horrible and you have to start over and try again. I ended up doing that three times for the cover page, but it was worth it.

The meta data came next. Under the Investigator icon there is a tab for adding meta data. It was simple to figure out and add the correct information in the right boxes.

I previewed the book several times as I was working through the process to make sure that everything was looking as it should. I am happy with the look of the iBook. I grabbed the copy of the iBook and attempted to use it on my iPad.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t make the program run on my iPad. It is an old iPad over 10 years old. It wasn’t able to recognize the file. I tried updating the iPad and it still wouldn’t recognize the file. We are Android users at my house, which is why we only have very old iPad. The files don’t work on any Android products. Due to the quarantine and trying to be a good neighbor by socially distancing at this time because of the Covid-19 virus, I was not able to test my iBook on an iPad. I did test it on the computer and it worked beautifully.

So, instead of testing devices I did a user test. I have two children who are the same age as the target audience. I had them look through the book. The biggest problem that I found was that they didn’t know to click on the paw prints. They figured everything else really quickly. They both are big fans of animals. The like the quiz, so much so that the youngest took the quiz twice so she could get all of the answers right. She also wanted a page about unicorns and spend the next ten minutes telling me everything that I should include about unicorns, which was fun.

The older one wanted more information about each of the animals. His favorite part was the interactive images. He liked seeing the animals and clicking on more information about it. Over all, the book is a success with my target audience.

I enjoyed the project. It was fun to make a book that is so interactive. It really brings to life what might otherwise be a dry book to read. Statics are not the most exciting things but when presented in an interesting way enhance the readability of the book.