Headquarters United States | ||
Founded December 1, 1992; 24 years ago (1992-12-01) Owner Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Parent Random House/Brøderbund | ||
Living Books was a series of interactive storybooks for children, first produced by Brøderbund and then spun off into a jointly-owned (with Random House) subsidiary, which were distributed on CD-ROM for Mac OS 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.
Contents
Atlantan production company Red Rubber Ball (later Little Ark Interactive) created a series of biblical-themes interactive storybooks under contract from Living Books in the late 1990's, and developed under the direction of members of the original Living Books team. The assets are currently licensed by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. As of 2017, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is offering the Living Books brand as a licensing opportunity on its website.
Availability
"Play-through" videos on most Living Books titles can be found on YouTube and several former Brøderbund leaders are releasing the titles on iOS and Android as Wanderful interactive storybooks.
Brøderbund released two compilations of the stories. The first one was titled "Three for Me Library Volume 1™" which contained "Sheila Rae, the Brave", "Just Grandma and Me" and "Little Monster at School". The second one was titled "Three for Me Library Volume 2™" which contained "The Berenstain Bears Get in a Fight", "Tortoise and the Hare" and "Harry and the Haunted House".
Reception
Computer Gaming World in 1993 praised Just Grandma and Me and Arthur's Teacher Trouble, describing Living Books as "Broderbund's acclaimed series". 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." 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". 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.