Puffin Books Launches Pioneering Digital Story-telling Kit for Children

Puffin Books today announces the launch of ‘We Make Stories' (www.wemakestories.com), a unique suite of digital tools for children to create, print and share stories online. The launch marks the first time that Puffin has sought to market services rather than content, and is the biggest digital initiative for children it has developed to date.

The site was created by a collaboration of specialists and agencies, including digital content specialist Zone, who built the housing site and ‘Treasure Map Maker ‘; ico Design who created the ‘Remix-it', ‘Telling Tales' and ‘Comic Genius' applications; Studio Tonne, who created ‘Pop!' the pop-up storymaker; Willow Tyrer and Isak Wiström who created the Tom Mouthy audiobook. Original stories were written by Alan Trotter.

‘We Make Stories' is aimed at children aged 6-11 years and is designed to encourage ‘stealth literacy' by combining digital media and gaming vernacular. Youngsters will develop literacy, creative and storytelling skills by creating pop-up books, customising audio books, designing their own comics, producing exciting treasure maps and learning how to create a variety of entertaining adventures.

The project follows on from the success of the award-winning We Tell Stories campaign in which Penguin authors collaborated with game designers to produce web-native fictions. Puffin have continued this recent push into digital media by commissioning four different teams of interaction designers to come together with the unifying goal of using the internet to inspire children's imaginations, and build the six modules that feature on the ‘We Make Stories' site.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, digital publisher for Penguin UK explained:

"It's almost impossible to find age-appropriate sites where children can create their own stories rather than read or watch other people's. We're especially delighted with how the different design teams, who didn't know each other to begin with, came together to produce some inspirational ideas that connected naturally and effectively to ensure ‘We Make Stories' will add value not just in homes, but also in schools where children are increasingly interested in more interactive digital learning activities."

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