Khoya

And in DNA mumbai

http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report_more-than-just-a-storybook_1473141

The initial drafts and illustrations of Shilo Shiv Suleman’s soon-to-be-released children’s book, Khoya, look promising. It narrates a tale of two children trying to change their dystopian world. But Khoya is not just a book. It holds its own secrets between the pages.

If the child has access to a computer, the internet and a webcam, Khoya lets her explore a technology called Augmented Reality. Each page comes with a card that has a riddle and symbol on it.

The child can visit the website listed in the book, switch the webcam on, and put the card in front of it. If she takes out a card shaped like an eye patch, slips it over her eye, and stands in front of the webcam with another card held close to her heart, the screen will identify the cards, while the child sees herself transform into one of the characters on screen. In some cases, the image serves as a clue to where the narrative is headed; in others, the child will suddenly find herself with one of the story’s characters sitting on her shoulder and cawing into the ear.

Technology in fantasy
Suleman, however, wasn’t so ambitious when she first set out to write and illustrate the book. The idea of Khoya came from the song Khoya Khoya Chand from the film Kala Bazaar (1960), a favourite of Suleman’s. That, and a childhood story she believed to be true: if you eat a seed, a tree will grow inside your stomach.

“I wanted to play with the ideas of a lost world where bizarre things happen to people. I wanted the book to be much more interactive than an ordinary book that only makes you imagine inside your head,” she says. At first, Suleman thought a pop-up book would do it, but then her animator friend, Dhruv Nawani, introduced her to Augmented Reality and she discovered how it can change the whole experience of reading a book.

The techie feel of Khoya does not, however, render it any less absorbing for kids who don’t have a computer and webcam. One can read the book as it comes, too. 
Till recently, interactivity in children’s books meant encouraging participation by introducing textures, volvelles (paper discs that can be rotated and used for calculations or to solve word games), flaps and pop-outs. But the latest innovations in IT may just change children’s storytelling forever.