Software Review: Knowledge Adventure Books by You For Children

I'm not a big fan of computer programs for little children. I have visions of children turning into zombies, staring at the computer monitor for hours at a time trying to keep up with jumping frogs, crashing cars and other mind-numbing images.

So when I came across a Knowledge Adventure program called Books by You for children to craft a novel on their own, I was torn between my fear and the excitement of having found something that seemed to marry technology with creativity and reading. I decided to give it a try - or, rather, let my soon-to-be seven year-old son give it a try. He is a voracious reader and I had a feeling he would love the idea of making a book on his own.

The software arrived, we slid it into the CD drive and suffice to say both my son and I are thrilled.

The program has four plots that the children can choose from, two alien stories and two mysteries involving monkeys. With John Lithgow, the wonderfully talented actor as the "muse", the program draws you into the process of writing with age-appropriate instructions. Books by You is fashioned in such a way that the broad outlines of the story are fixed, but the children get to craft all the details - the names of the characters, the mannerisms (what would a character do if he or she got upset, for instance), the mental make-up and appearance of the characters and so on.

It is fascinating to watch your child go through this process because you get to see how his experiences educate his choice of characterization. When it was time to pick a name for the hero of his novel, The Mystery of the Monkey Palace, my son gravitated towards the names of his favorite cricket players. He was saying them out aloud - Ricky Ponting, Kevin Pietersen, Graeme Smith, Rahul Dravid.... He stopped at Rahul Dravid (the captain of the Indian cricket team) and said he didn't want to pick his name for the main character. Why not, I asked. I was curious. "Because I don't feel Indian in this story, mom!"

The novel my son picked is divided into four chapters and each chapter contains about 30 questions that round out the characters and flesh out the details of the plot. According to Knowledge Adventure, this program is designed for children eight years and above. For children at the lower end of the range, I'd imagine it would take at least two or three sittings before the novel is completed. The first time around, my son sat for a solid hour and a half, engrossed in the story, racking his brains for names and expressions, trying to put himself in the shoes of his characters and imagine what they might do in the situations presented in the plot. Once he finished the first chapter, he eagerly read it, delighting in how his work shaped the story. In the process he added many new words to his vocabulary.

Article Author: Sujatha Bagal

Sujatha Bagal is a writer based in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. She also blogs about parenting, travel, books, movies, food and politics at Blogpourri, which she started in Bangalore to document life as an expat in that city.

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