We are concerned that the recent negative press about children’s use of digital media side-lines the positive role many digital books play in children’s lives. We believe that there are many pathways into literacy and that digital books offer unique potential for bilingual education, for motivating reluctant readers, for supplementing the learning for children with special educational needs and for reaching low-literate and low-income families and for positioning children as authors or co-authors of multimedia stories.

The current landscape of children’s digital books is difficult: the business model of design and distribution of children’s e-books/apps is not fundamentally built to deliver value to small innovative national publishers. Most teachers lack professional development opportunities concerning e-book use in schools and evidence-based criteria for choosing quality products. Researchers often operate in silos, missing out on opportunities to coordinate interdisciplinary efforts, methodological and theoretical expertise.

​Our ambition is to change the status quo through collaboration, advocacy and community-driven research and design.