Village Gamer

Digital agency Fuel has announced the launch of Leafy Landings, an interactive book series developed for the pre-school generation. Leafy Landings is the latest of Fuel’s youth properties designed to appeal to kids’ demand for entertainment and education through digital media.

Readers of the Leafy Landings series learn from Spitfire, a firefly and flight instructor, as he teaches young insects to be the best flyers they can be – and offers important life lessons along the way. Each page in Leafy Landings is interactive; through the animation features, kids can tap the screen, use their finger like a pen and solve puzzles to advance the story. Additionally, they can build their reading skills by following highlighted words as the narrator reads the story aloud. In the first book, kids will follow along as Spitfire takes Spot, the ladybug who can’t fly as fast as her friends, on a journey of self-discovery as she learns to embrace her differences.

Though Fuel has years of experience creating rich online entertainment and education experiences for kids, Leafy Landings is the company’s first foray into interactive book publishing. The book was developed using a proprietary self-sustained back-end interactive engine, through which Fuel plans to develop several interactive book properties over the next few years.

“The interactive children’s book market is relatively nascent, but as kids’ attention spans grow shorter, digital media remains pervasive and education remains a paramount priority to parents, we see enormous growth potential in this area,” said Mike Burns, CEO and CCO, Fuel. “Leafy Landings represents an incredible development as we continue to reach this important demographic through our original properties, and we look forward to developing inventive, educational and engaging forms of entertainment that tap into the needs and imaginations of kids everywhere.”

Leafy Landings is available now for $2.99 on the iTunes App Store for iPad 2 and 3.